La Jornada: They explore the circumstances that shaped the countries participating in this World Cup

Days before the 2026 World Cup concludes, there is a ball that is still rolling away from the fields.

In Peloti and the World Cup: A cultural guide to understanding the gamepublished by Alfaguara, the tournament stops being a succession of matches to open views on maps, borders, migrations, conflicts, art and culture.

The central figure is not the championship scorer or the fashionable star. He is Peloti, a child character who observes the planet with curiosity and questions the certainties that usually accompany nations.

Their questions reveal the history and circumstances that gave rise to the identity of the countries represented in the sporting event.

“We wanted to be challenged by a character similar to the reader we imagined, situated at the end of childhood or the beginning of adolescence,” explained Mariana Anzorena, one of the co-authors, in an interview with The Day.

“From that naivety one allows oneself to ask complex things that perhaps an adult no longer dares to ask or even admit that they do not know. We are greatly inspired by the tradition of Mafalda to build this voice.”

The work brings together texts by Gina Jaramillo, Mariana Anzorena, Rafael Igartúa A., Sebastián Kohan and Daniel González. The prologue is by Jorge Valdano and the epilogue by Marion Reimers, with illustrations by Alejandro Magallanes.

Rather than following scorers or statistics, each chapter takes a selection as a starting point to explore the context that explains its present.

Mexico refers to the Mexica world, muralism and a reflection on the development of national soccer; South Africa leads the fight against apartheid; Colombia carries the history of millions of displaced people; Algeria remembers its war of independence, and Haiti opens a conversation about slavery, revolution and memory.

“There are many books where the main figure is the soccer player or the statistics. We wanted to talk about the context, the countries and migration,” Anzorena added.

Uprooting and migrations

When reviewing the history of several selections, little-known episodes appeared. One of the most striking arose in the case of Haiti.

“The Caribbean team played its qualifying matches outside its territory due to the high level of violence that the country faces since its stadium in Port-au-Prince is taken over by armed groups,” commented the journalist.

“Some members of the squad don’t even know Haiti, despite representing a nation with which they have family ties; their coach had not been there either.”

That case also led her to delve into the independence process, the tradition of voodoo and the political consequences that marked that nation during the second half of the 20th century.

It was during that investigation when he discovered that FIFA prevented the Caribbean team from using a t-shirt depicting the battle that led to their independence, led by enslaved people with the support of a group of Polish legionnaires.

The French and German teams show how different communities have enriched this sport.

For Anzorena, the Zidane family summarizes that relationship between migration and national identity. “Zinedine Zidane, of Algerian descent, was champion with France in 1998, while his son Luca defended the goal of Algeria, the country of his grandparents.”

Peloti raises several questions: why do England and Scotland play separately if they are part of the United Kingdom? Why is Curaçao participating independently? Why does Nico Williams represent Spain and Iñaki Williams represent Ghana? The questions point to the way in which national identities are constructed and the human movements that have shaped them.

In the epilogue, Marion Reimers explains that football functions as a megaphone and an uncomfortable mirror of the world that produces it: its inequalities, its contradictions and its desires for community.

“It is important for children and adolescents to know that the concept of the nation-state is very recent in the history of humanity. The borders we currently have are not fixed, they can change. Many times they have to do with the power of those who were able to draw them,” said Anzorena.

“We want our readers to not take as true everything that is said about football, what FIFA says, nor the idea that is sold to us about a country and a nation. We are all children, grandchildren, parents or great-grandchildren of migrants.”

Peloti and the World Cup: A cultural guide to understanding the game It is now available in the main bookstores in the country with a price of 400 pesos.