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In Vancouver, in the opening week of the 2026 FIFA world football showpiece, Nestory Irankunda became the youngest player to score for Australia at the World Cup.
The 20-year-old celebrated his effort in the 2-0 win over Turkey by hitting the corner flag, a tribute to Australia’s Tim Cahill.
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The celebration did not reflect what happened earlier: the refugee camp in Kigoma, Tanzania, where Irankunda was born after his parents fled the civil war in Burundi. Two of his teammates carry the same story at the same level.
In the largest World Cup tournament held by 48 countries, which are Canada, Mexico and the United States, at least nine players have a story of immigration or deportation. Along with others, they were brought together last month by the UN refugee agency under a campaign called the Gamechanging Team.
UNHCR says 117 million people have been displaced worldwide, including nearly 49 million children.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Barham Salih, called this World Cup “a good time … to send a message of hope to fans around the world,” in the same May speech that announced the Gamechanging Team.
For players who share a similar painful past, the message is to play more than a hundred matches this summer, in front of the biggest audience football has ever drawn.
Here are the nine players who made it to the finals – along with two others who missed out – and where their stories come from.
Alphonso Davies – Canada
Davies was born in 2000 in the Buduburam refugee camp, Ghana, after his parents fled the civil war in Liberia; The family settled again in Edmonton, Canada, when he was five years old. In March 2021 he became the first footballer to be named a UNHCR Global Goodwill Ambassador. “Although the refugee camp was a safe place for my family when they fled the war, I often wonder where I would be if I were there,” he said in a UNHCR letter announcing his appointment. “I don’t think I would have gotten to where I am today.” Davies is now in charge of Canada, one of the three countries that sit alongside Mexico and the US – who only qualify.
Mohamed Toure – Australia
Toure was born in a refugee camp in Conakry, Guinea, in 2004, after his family fled Liberia and spent 14 years waiting for resettlement. “Our town was attacked by a group of men and we fled,” his father, Amara, told Football Australia’s YouTube channel, in a statement reported by ITV News Anglia on June 12, 2026. The family settled in Adelaide, Australia. Now Australia’s number one player, Toure told Soccer Australia immediately: “If my dad can go to work and say: ‘Yeah, my son played in the World Cup’… that makes me happier than playing in the World Cup”.
But Mabil – Australia
Mabil was born in a refugee camp in Kakuma, Kenya, to South Sudanese parents fleeing civil war, and settled in Adelaide at the age of 10. He scored the penalty that sent Australia to the 2022 World Cup and also founded Barefoot to Boots, a charity that provides football equipment to children still living in Kakuma. “Everything is possible…so keep going,” he told Sunstar in the Philippines during Refugee Week in June 2026.
Nestory Rankunda – Australia
Irankunda was born in a refugee camp in Kigoma, Tanzania, after his parents fled the civil war in Burundi. “My older sister got sick and was about to leave her, but my father couldn’t,” she said in an interview this month with beIN Sports, explaining her family’s escape.
About his World Cup goal against Türkiye: “It’s unreal and a dream come true”.
Ermedin Demirovic – Bosnia and Herzegovina
Demirovic was born in Germany, where his father settled after fleeing Bosnia during the Balkan wars. He chose to represent Bosnia and Herzegovina and not Germany. “To represent Bosnia and Herzegovina in its second World Cup makes me very proud,” he said in a UNHCR statement released in May at the launch of its Gamechanging Team campaign.
Asmir Begovic – Bosnia and Herzegovina
Begovic fled Bosnia at the age of four, first to Germany, then to Canada, where he learned the game.
He played in the first World Cup in Bosnia in 2014 and remained in the squad for his second game. “I remember from time to time when I was driving,” he said in an interview with Goal.com in 2022. No one felt sorry for us, and you didn’t feel sorry for yourself.
Antonio Rudiger – Germany
Rudiger was born in Berlin – not in a camp, but to a woman who fled the civil war in Sierra Leone in 1991 and settled in Neukolln, a district that she described in a 2020 interview on the official site of Chelsea FC as “a difficult place where many refugees grew up.”
“My parents came to Germany from Sierra Leone in search of safety and a better future,” he said in the same UNHCR statement that launched the Gamechanging Team in May. “Representing Germany is a turning point for me.”
Ali Al-Hamadi – Iraq
Al-Hamadi was an infant when his family fled Iraq in 2003, prompted by his father’s arrest for participating in peaceful protests against Saddam Hussein.
After his father, who was studying to be a lawyer at the time, was released, the family fled to the United Kingdom.
Iraq took part in the first World Cup in almost four decades this year, and Al-Hamadi made the team. “It’s not just my father, it’s my mother,” he told the BBC, in an interview published this month. “For a girl to pick me up… and leave her country… it was devastating.”
Eduardo Camavinga – France
Camavinga was born in a refugee camp in Angola after his parents fled the war in DR Congo. Before the 2022 Champions League, he said, in a statement released through UNHCR: “I was born in a refugee camp in Angola after my family fled the war… I am happy to play, and I am proud to do so, as a former refugee”.
Bernard Kamungo – United States
Kamungo was born near a refugee camp in Tanzania after his family fled DR Congo.
He made the US national team in 2024 but was not included in the final 26-man roster for this summer’s World Cup.
Victor Moses – Nigeria
Moses’ case is the most serious of the eleven, and the only one without a World Cup campaign after that – Nigeria did not qualify. When he was eleven years old, his missionary parents were killed in religious violence in Kaduna, Nigeria, in 2002; fled to the UK alone as a child unaccompanied and was brought up by a foster family. He won the Premier League with Chelsea and played for Nigeria at the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
