{"id":6140,"date":"2026-07-03T08:06:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T08:06:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=6140"},"modified":"2026-07-03T08:06:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T08:06:46","slug":"for-two-brothers-on-different-teams-at-the-world-cup-identity-is-complicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=6140","title":{"rendered":"For two brothers on different teams at the World Cup, identity is complicated"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When not representing their national teams, Nico (left) and I\u00f1aki Williams are teammates for Club Athletic in Bilbao, Spain. (Cesar Manso\/AFP\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

BILBAO, Spain \u2014 I\u00f1aki and Nico Williams, the faces of a new kind of World Cup, are <\/b>inside the practice headquarters of one of soccer\u2019s most remarkable professional teams, trying to explain what it means to be many different things.<\/p>

Read more Eastern heat on July 4 threatens World Cup players and fans<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u00f1aki, who plays for Ghana, and Nico, who plays for Spain, are the sons of Ghanaian immigrants who walked across the Sahara to get to Spain. The brothers were born in Spain, raised in Spain and live in Spain. But they were also born and raised and live in Basque Country, whose people were brutally suppressed during the nearly 40-year reign of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in the mid-20th century. They see themselves, naturally, as separate from Spain.<\/p>\n

Identity is complicated for the Williams brothers, in other words, because they don\u2019t exactly consider themselves Ghanaian or Spanish.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I go to the Ghana team sometimes, I feel a bit like, \u2018What am I doing here?\u2019\u201d I\u00f1aki says. \u201cAnd when I\u2019m here, I also have things [happen] where I say, \u2018My parents never taught me this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nico nods in agreement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI grew up in the Basque culture, which I think is the best in Spain,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m also playing with the Spanish national team, and it\u2019s also my pride to represent it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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I\u00f1aki, 32, competes for Ghana during a World Cup game against England on June 23. (Brian Snyder\/Reuters)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n
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Nico, 23, playing for Spain, passes the ball during a match against Saudi Arabia on June 21. (Mattia Ozbot\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

Beneath the nationalistic fervor of the World Cup, with its singing fans and waving flags, the players\u2019 backgrounds are a tangle of passports and visas and birth certificates wrapped in generational family narratives. In 2022, I\u00f1aki and Nico became the first full brothers to play for different teams in the same World Cup. This time they are joined by two sets of full brothers and a pair of half brothers on separate countries\u2019 rosters. Future World Cups no doubt will bring more.<\/p>\n

I\u00f1aki, 32, is helping lead Ghana into a Round of 32 match <\/b>on Friday against Colombia, with fast and aggressive play at the front of Ghana\u2019s attack. Nico, just 23 and battling injuries at this World Cup, is one of Spain\u2019s most important players heading into Thursday\u2019s match with Austria, a brilliant dribbler whose blond-tipped braids piled atop his head are impossible to miss. He is one of the featured players in Nike\u2019s \u201cRip the Script\u201d ad campaign, chasing Mbapp\u00e9 through a television studio and battling Vini Jr. for possession.<\/p>\n

They are prominent examples of how immigration has changed global soccer and the World Cup. I\u00f1aki is one of eight players on Ghana\u2019s roster born outside of the country. Spain, whose immigrant population has exploded this century, is increasingly resting its soccer hopes on players like Nico and the country\u2019s biggest star, 18-year-old Lamine Yamal, who also is the child of African parents.<\/p>\n

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Nico and teammates celebrate his goal during an Athletic Club match in January 2025. (Juan Manuel Serrano Arce\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n
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The brothers\u2019 side-by-side kits at Athletic Club\u2019s San Mames Stadium. (UEFA\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

For I\u00f1aki and Nico, their story is more tangled than most: Their entire professional careers have been spent with Athletic Club Bilbao, a team like no other in the top levels of global soccer. Athletic Club signs only players from Basque Country, limiting its talent pool to a region of roughly 3 million people in northeastern Spain and a sliver of southwestern France.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a policy that puts the club at a disadvantage in Spain\u2019s powerful top league, La Liga, and in competing for players with Europe\u2019s other elite leagues, who sign players from all over the world. Yet Bilbao\u2019s club has been one of Spain\u2019s most successful, winning eight La Liga championships and taking Spain\u2019s Copa del Rey 24 times, the second most of any team. It is one of only three La Liga clubs to have never been relegated. The other two, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid, are among the world\u2019s mightiest franchises.<\/p>\n

In heavily Catholic Basque Country, they call this \u201cThe Miracle of Bilbao.\u201d<\/p>\n

On this gray winter afternoon, at Athletic Club\u2019s practice facility high on a hill above Bilbao, it\u2019s a miracle I\u00f1aki and Nico are here at all.<\/p>\n

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San Mames Stadium in Bilbao, in Basque Country. (Juan Manuel Serrano Arce\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

More than three decades ago, Nico and I\u00f1aki\u2019s parents, Felix Williams and Maria Arthuer, left Ghana in the back of an open truck packed with 40 or so migrants. Their guides promised to take them to the autonomous Spanish city of Melilla, nestled along Morocco\u2019s northern coast. But their guides abandoned them, <\/b>I\u00f1aki says, leaving everyone to walk hundreds of miles across the African desert to reach Melilla.<\/p>\n

The sun burned down. Temperatures soared to over 100 degrees. The blazing sand left permanent marks on Felix\u2019s feet. Many people died. Maria wanted to go back, she later told her children.<\/p>\n

When they finally reached Melilla, Felix and Maria climbed a steel fence around the city\u2019s perimeter and managed to convince Spanish officials they were fleeing a war. They were granted asylum and moved by aid workers to Bilbao.<\/p>\n

Only then did Maria learn she had done all this while pregnant with I\u00f1aki.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a story of overcoming,\u201d I\u00f1aki says.<\/p>\n

Not long after I\u00f1aki was born, he and his parents moved to another Basque city, Pamplona. Felix and Maria struggled to adjust, I\u00f1aki says, but they \u201cmet good people who gave them jobs.\u201d Felix worked at a slaughterhouse while Maria cleaned houses in the mornings and then worked afternoons at the Pamplona airport. I\u00f1aki often came with her.<\/p>\n

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The brothers with their mother, Maria Arthuer, in 2024. (Europa Press Entertainment\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

When Spain\u2019s economy collapsed in 2008, Felix went to London, where he took several jobs, among them collecting tickets at the Stamford Bridge stadium, home to the famed soccer club Chelsea. He stayed in England for several years, sending whatever he made back to Spain.<\/p>\n

Nico was still little. Maria was working multiple jobs. Money was tight. I\u00f1aki was often left to raise Nico himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy brother played, for many moments in my life, the role of my father,\u201d Nico says. \u201cHe has given me everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, I\u00f1aki found time to play soccer and rose fast through the Basque youth leagues. Nico, several years younger, tried hard to keep up. When Athletic Club recruited I\u00f1aki to its academy, his decision was easy. Of course he would join the Basque team\u2019s program. And of course Nico followed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s why I\u2019m the player I am today,\u201d Nico says of I\u00f1aki\u2019s drive. \u201cIf it hadn\u2019t been for him, things would have been quite different.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Nico and I\u00f1aki warm up before a match last summer. (NurPhoto\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

Early in his Athletic Club career, I\u00f1aki had the words \u201cDavid vs Goliath\u201d tattooed on his upper arm. Maria used to tell her sons about David and how he slew the giant Goliath by using just a slingshot and a stone. The tattoo is part tribute to his parents\u2019 path to Spain, and an even bigger tribute to the only soccer home he\u2019s ever known.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes us different from the other clubs [is] the power to represent something that you share,\u201d I\u00f1aki says. \u201cI think in the world we live in, where you see clubs signing [players] from all over the world \u2026 we nourish ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Almost everything about Athletic Club celebrates Basque Country. The team\u2019s operations are run from an early-20th-century neo-Basque mansion with a stained-glass-covered atrium, a chapel and a church organ with pipes almost a story tall. The mansion belonged to a prominent Basque family until Franco\u2019s soldiers seized the home and made it one of their barracks.<\/p>\n

The club\u2019s stadium, located a few blocks across downtown Bilbao, is named San Mam\u00e9s after the child saint whom the Romans threw to the lions in the 3rd century B.C. for being Christian. He tamed the lions by preaching to them, the legend goes. That the Romans killed him anyway, thrusting a trident through his stomach, seems to match the spirit of Athletic Club.<\/p>\n

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Athletic Club\u2019s academy team trains in Bilbao. (Les Carpenter\/The Washington Post)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cFrom 2 or 3 years old you have in your blood, before you learn anything else in life, what Athletic is and what San Mam\u00e9s Stadium is,\u201d says Mikel Gonz\u00e1lez, Athletic Club\u2019s director of football. \u201cEvery player, when he\u2019s young, dreams to play professional football, to play Champions League, to play La Liga or Premier League, but here it\u2019s different. Here, you dream of playing for Athletic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teams from around the world send delegations to Bilbao to study Athletic Club\u2019s operation, he says, trying to understand how it can win with such a limited pool of players. Gonz\u00e1lez knows these other teams are looking for a secret, something they can take home and exploit themselves.<\/p>

Read more No, the U.S. can\u2019t save their star from a one-game ban<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThey think we have, I don\u2019t know, this special machine,\u201d Gonz\u00e1lez says, laughing. \u201cI\u2019d like to tell them we have like a super machine to make the players faster, to make the players better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, he tells them how Athletic Club takes all the money and effort that other teams put into international scouting and spends it on 180 youth leagues in Basque Country, teaching Athletic Club\u2019s methods and building relationships with players and coaches and parents. The best players, he says, eventually come to Athletic Club\u2019s academy like I\u00f1aki and Nico and ultimately ascend to <\/b>the top team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey know there is going to be a space on the first team in his position, and we are not going to go to Japan or Portugal or to France to sign another,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n

But how do you explain what it means to be Basque? That it\u2019s about more than soccer? That it\u2019s about the mansion with the chapel, and the passion of the child saint, and what it means when you truly believe you are David always hurling stones at Goliath?<\/p>\n

Gonz\u00e1lez doesn\u2019t mind sharing Athletic Club\u2019s secrets. He knows no one can duplicate them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you play with players that [grew up within] one hour of Bilbao, you have a kind of small family,\u201d he says. \u201cThat builds a bond [and] everything is easier when [the team] has a bad moment,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

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I\u00f1aki says he\u2019s playing for Ghana to honor his parents and grandparents. (Martin Meissner\/AP)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

When he joined the top team in 2014, I\u00f1aki was only the second Black player in Athletic Club\u2019s history. Later that season, he became the first to score a goal. Immigration was only beginning to come to Basque Country, so there were few young players of color for Athletic Club to pursue. I\u00f1aki\u2019s arrival made the team better.<\/p>\n

He quickly became a star on the wing, where his combination of speed and power made him a constant threat to score. But it was his durability that established him as the team\u2019s leader, with his record 251 consecutive matches between 2016 and 2023. He has scored 114 goals in his 12 seasons and is the team\u2019s captain.<\/p>\n

Nico was 12 when I\u00f1aki was promoted to Athletic Club. He joined the first team at 19 and solidified himself as a wing opposite I\u00f1aki the next year. But Nico\u2019s real breakthrough came in the summer of 2024, while playing for Spain in the European Championship. He scored twice in the tournament, the second goal coming in the final, a 2-1 victory over England. His dazzling passing and playmaking suddenly made him a star.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore, Nico was my brother,\u201d I\u00f1aki jokes. \u201cNow I\u2019m Nico\u2019s brother.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Nico has quickly become a star for Athletic Club. (Ion Alcoba Beitia\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

Last summer, the big money came to take Nico away from Bilbao.<\/p>\n

Offers came strong, first from the German powerhouse Bayern Munich and then from Athletic Club\u2019s La Liga rival FC Barcelona, the famous club of soccer immortals like Johan Cruyff, Ronaldinho and Messi. Some of Nico\u2019s closest friends on the Spanish national team, including Yamal, play for Barcelona.<\/p>\n

Nico was tempted. He and Yamal had been impossible to stop at the previous summer\u2019s Euros. He could imagine how dominant they would be together for Barcelona. A few weeks before, Athletic Club had made the Champions League for the first time in a decade. It was a huge moment for Bilbao and Basque Country. But Barcelona makes the Champions League nearly every season.<\/p>\n

Reports flew that Nico was on the verge of signing with Barcelona. His departure seemed so certain that Athletic Club fans, feeling betrayed, defaced a mural of I\u00f1aki and Nico that had been painted on a wall in Bilbao.<\/p>\n

But Nico surprised everyone by instead signing a 10-year contract extension with Athletic Club. He announced the deal on a social media post made by the team that showed Nico, in the middle of the night, spray-painting \u201cWin 2035\u201d across the mural.<\/p>\n

\u201cAthletic is everything,\u201d he says. \u201cIn my case, it was growing up watching my brother on the first team and wanting to be like him. The most important thing was building what he was building. It\u2019s important to me to make history here. On other teams, you might be one more piece, but you are not a fundamental piece. And that\u2019s what matters.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Nico and other members of the Spanish team arrive in Chattanooga, Tennessee, ahead of World Cup competition. (George Walker IV\/AP)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

Their first choice was always Spain.<\/p>\n

Basque Country does technically have a national team, but the team is not sanctioned by global soccer\u2019s governing body, FIFA, and not eligible for competitions like the World Cup. So for I\u00f1aki, just as it has been for most of Athletic Club\u2019s best players over the years, playing for the European powerhouse Spain, despite his complicated feelings, was the No. 1 option.<\/p>\n

In 2015, he was picked for Spain\u2019s under-21 team and played in 17 matches over two years. But he didn\u2019t make the country\u2019s World Cup roster in 2016, and aside from one friendly match with the top national team that year, he was never called up to the national team in the following years.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Ghana was starting to recruit foreign-born players with Ghanaian roots. It started showing interest in I\u00f1aki. As the 2022 World Cup approached and playing for Spain appeared less likely, he joined Ghana\u2019s Black Stars, something he was eligible to do because he had never played in a World Cup qualifying match for Spain.<\/p>\n

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I\u00f1aki marks Ghana\u2019s draw with England during the World Cup group stage. (David Butler II\/Imagn Images\/Reuters)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

Though many saw the move as I\u00f1aki seizing a chance to play in the World Cup after being rejected by Spain, he has repeatedly said in interviews that he made the decision to honor his parents and grandparents in Ghana.<\/p>\n

Nico, with his exquisite ballhandling, had an easier time in Spain\u2019s national team system, playing on the country\u2019s U-18 and U-19 teams. By the time I\u00f1aki decided to take Ghana\u2019s offer, it was clear Nico would probably be on Spain\u2019s World Cup team in Qatar in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the end, I have a lot of roots,\u201d Nico says. \u201cMy parents are [Ghanaian] and I am proud of that country. But I\u2019ve lived all my life in Spain and I play for Spain because I think it is more with my values [though] I do have that connection with Ghana.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents have instilled certain values that are usually African, but I live here,\u201d Nico continues. \u201cAll my friends are from here; my girlfriend is from here; and when we get together with people, they are from here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bilbao is changing fast. Big wins for Athletic Club are now celebrated by fans from Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon. The diversity brings a new sense of responsibility for the brothers.<\/p>\n

I\u00f1aki says that as Athletic Club\u2019s second Black player and the team\u2019s first Black star, he had to \u201cknock down those certain barriers and destroy certain prejudices.\u201d Nico feels some of the same pressure, though there is now a third Black player on Athletic Club, Adama Boiro (born in Senegal and raised in Pamplona), and each of the club\u2019s academy teams has at least one Black player.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a very strong [responsibility] here,\u201d Nico says. <\/b><\/p>\n

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Athletic is the only soccer club the brothers have known. (Juan Manuel Serrano Arce\/Getty Images)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

But first comes the World Cup, and Spain\u2019s lofty expectations for Nico (even with his injuries), and the hopes I\u00f1aki can help fulfill for Ghana. Their teams are on the opposite sides of the bracket, so the only way they can face each other is if both countries can make the World Cup final.<\/p>\n

More likely, the next time they will be on a field together will be back home in Bilbao, playing for the only club they\u2019ve ever known.<\/p>

Read more Embolo, Ndoye score and Switzerland moves on at the World Cup with a 2-0 win over Algeria<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spain\u2019s Nico Williams and Ghana\u2019s I\u00f1aki Williams represent their parents\u2019 saga \u2014 and how immigration has changed global soccer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6125,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nFor two brothers on different teams at the World Cup, identity is complicated - Moving Insider USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=6140\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"For two brothers on different teams at the World Cup, identity is complicated - 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