France National football team players

The English and French squads meeting in the World Cup quarter-finals this weekend are a reminder of what migrants can bring to a nation.

Those drifting to the site in midweek have been alerted to the location of Care4Calais’ distribution by an online newsletter provided in nine languages by the charity Infobus. “The preconception of ‘a refugee’ in this country is probably not a bloke from Canada or Honduras playing football with a massive smile on his face. Concerns about overcrowding and the strain it places on a struggling economy are voiced regularly, fears repeated by those in charge of the country. Tuesday’s handouts were of socks and SIM cards, as well as leaflets on how to seek legal advice should they make it to the UK. [Bukayo Saka](https://theathletic.com/football/player/bukayo-saka-KM98BOcjxMZ919HO/)’s mother, Adenike, was born in Nigeria, while others trace their roots to the Caribbean. Many here are supporting [Brazil](https://theathletic.com/football/team/brazil/), but also [France](https://theathletic.com/football/team/france/) and [England](https://theathletic.com/football/team/england/). [Jules Kounde](https://theathletic.com/football/player/jules-kounde-eNFXh1X41fiInMxq/)’s ancestry stretches back to Nigeria, Togo and Benin, while [Eduardo Camavinga](https://theathletic.com/football/player/eduardo-camavinga-qBwUXaLK9rZqTwy4/) was born to Congolese parents in a refugee camp in Angola. They were inspired by the vision of Zinedine Zidane, a stellar talent of Algerian Kabyle descent, and the on-field presence of Marcel Desailly, one of the country’s finest centre-halves and a player born in Accra, Ghana. Will [Kyle Walker](https://theathletic.com/football/player/kyle-walker-0ZTVFCfiA5I3chgf/) cope and can [Harry Kane](https://theathletic.com/football/player/harry-kane-47vQtg5y5Ub8iFqb/), as supplier and scorer alike, impose himself on the reigning world champions? Their regular visits, delivering donations from a warehouse just off the seafront, provide much-needed respite from the brutality of life as an asylum seeker in northern [France](https://theathletic.com/live-blogs/england-vs-france-world-cup-2022-live-score-updates-result/Fmu0zs2QGSHT/). Plenty of the local residents are hostile and the police mount regular raids to confiscate tents, tarpaulins and bedding and move the migrants on, sometimes merely a few hundred metres down the road. It centres on whether one of the Sudanese nominally guarding the northern goal had slid across in time to clear a shot from inside his left post.