The Diaspora as a Lost Football Resource: Why Armenia, Serbia and Other Countries Are Losing More Players

Similar stories are becoming increasingly common in European football: a young player has roots in one country but is born and receives his football education in another, before eventually facing a choice over which national team to represent.

Such situations are felt particularly strongly in countries with large diasporas — Armenia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania and others.

Another reason for discussion emerged this week. In Serbia, attention has focused on the first call-ups to Switzerland's U21 national team for two players of Serbian origin — Louna Srdjanovic of French club Lille and Andrej Vasovic of Belgian side Club Brugge. Both were included in the Swiss U21 squad for the September-October matches.

Almost simultaneously, a similar story unfolded for Armenia. Albert Aleksanyan, who has Armenian roots, received his first call-up to the Latvia senior national team. The 20-year-old footballer was born in Latvia, grew up in Norway and currently plays in Sweden.

These are not isolated cases but part of a trend that is likely to become even more noticeable in the coming years.

A New Generation of the Diaspora Has Grown Up

The reason is fairly simple.

During the 1990s and the following decades, millions of people left Armenia, the countries of the former Yugoslavia and other states in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet region. The reasons varied — wars, economic crises, political instability and the search for better living conditions.

Today, the children of those emigrants have grown up, and another generation is now entering football.

Many of these players were born in Switzerland, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden or other European countries. They went to school there, started playing football there and developed within local academy systems.

For that reason, blaming a player for choosing the country of his birth is, at the very least, strange. For many of them, it genuinely is their home country rather than simply a more convenient option for their football career.

From the perspective of their families' countries of origin, however, the situation looks different.

It Is Not Only a Person Who Is Lost, but a Potential Footballer as Well

When hundreds of thousands of people leave a country, it does not only lose population at that particular moment. One or two generations later, it also means losing a huge number of potential athletes, scientists, entrepreneurs, musicians and professionals in other fields who are now being born and developing in a completely different environment.

Football simply makes this process particularly visible.

A good example is Arsen Zakharyan. He was born in Samara and developed within the Russian football system, but his parents are Armenians from Artsakh who left the region during the Karabakh war of the 1990s. Zakharyan eventually became a player for the Russian national team.

One can ask: would Zakharyan have become a player of the same level if he had grown up in Armenia?

Perhaps not. The Russian football system provided him with academies, infrastructure and a level of competition that played a major role in his development.

But another scenario is also possible. Perhaps instead of one Zakharyan, several other talented players could have emerged if their families had not left the region at the time. The same applies to the Balkan countries.

Xherdan Shaqiri, for example, was born in Kosovo but moved to Switzerland with his family as a child, where he grew up and received his football education. He later became one of the most famous players in the history of the Swiss national team.

That is the main point: the issue is not so much about one particular player as it is about the scale of the football potential that has been lost.

“Stealing Players” or a Natural Process?

In the countries where such footballers grow up, the opposite argument can also be heard: the player received his football education here, local clubs and the federation invested resources in his development, and now the country of his family's origin is trying to obtain a finished player.

There is logic to that argument. But there is another side to the issue as well.

Many families ended up outside their historical homeland because of difficult events — wars, conflicts, economic disasters and political upheaval. In some cases, external states also played a role in those processes.

For that reason, the situation cannot easily be reduced to a simple formula in which one federation “developed” the player while another is now trying to “steal” him. For countries with huge diasporas, working with such players is more an attempt to preserve ties with a population the country once lost.

At the same time, the final choice should always remain with the player himself.

The Competition for Diaspora Players Is Becoming Part of Football

Football federations have long understood the value of this work. In 2023, for example, the Football Association of Serbia openly discussed its work with diaspora players and described Switzerland-born Mihajlo Stevanovic's move to the Serbian youth national team as an important result of the sporting department's efforts.

For Armenia, this issue will also become increasingly important. It is not enough simply to discover a promising footballer with an Armenian surname at the age of 19 or 20 and invite him to join the national team.

The competition begins much earlier. Constant monitoring of European academies is required, along with contact with players' families, invitations to youth national teams and a clear understanding of what role a player could have in the senior national side.

By the time a footballer becomes noticeable at senior level, the choice has often already effectively been made. In California, for example, the PAYFA program works in this area and is already successfully supplying players to Armenia's youth national teams.

The stories of Aleksanyan, Srdjanovic and Vasovic are only recent examples of a much broader process.

And there will be even more such cases in the coming years.

For Armenia, Serbia, Bosnia and other countries with large diasporas, this is no longer a secondary issue. Working with the diaspora is gradually becoming one of the most important reserves for national football — an opportunity to recover at least part of the sporting potential that, together with emigration, ended up outside the country's borders.