Back to the Soccer Newsfeed

The New Recruits

Related Topics: Raoul Savoy, Bryan Mbeumo

More than 130 players at the World Cup represent a country other than that of their birth. A few of them committed only months before the World Cup.

Iñaki Williams was born in Spain and grew up there, but committed to play for Ghana this fall.Credit...Hamad I Mohammed/Reuters

DOHA, Qatar — Bryan Mbeumo did not know, not for certain, why he had received the invitation, but he knew it was not the kind to turn down. The chance to pick the brains of Samuel Eto’o, one of the finest strikers of his generation and one of the greatest African players in soccer history, does not come along every day.