To the French national motto liberté, égalité, fraternité you can probably go ahead and add diversité, at least as far as its soccer team is concerned.
Sixteen of the 23 players on the team come from families that recently immigrated to France from places like Zaire, Martinique, Cameroon, Morocco, Angola, Congo or Algeria. Forward Antoine Griezmann, the team’s leading scorer, is half-German and half-Portuguese. Defender Samuel Umtiti, who scored the goal that sent France to the final, was born in Cameroon. Teenage prodigy Kylian Mbappe is part Cameroonian, part Algerian.
"Football,” Yvan Gastaut, a University of Nice historian, told the Associated Press, “allows us to put immigration on stage, a question that is agitating European countries right now.