STRONGER:

The hopes of the two nations attempting to force passage into the tournament's last four will be carried by first-generation migrants, or the sons or grandsons of migrants - legacies of colonial pasts, certainly, but also of the free movement of people in search of a better life. A sentiment those back in Calais will share.

Walker is of Jamaican ethnicity while Kane's father, Patrick, is from Letterfrack, in Ireland's County Galway. Mbappe grew up in the suburbs of Paris, but his father, Wilfried, is from Cameroon and his mother, Fayza Lamari, from Algeria. Griezmann's grandfather, Amaro Lopes, was Portuguese while Dembele's mother, Fatimata, is from Mauritania and his father, Ousmane Snr, from Mali. These two teams seeking a place in the World Cup semi-finals have been shaped by migration.

African connections abound through Didier Deschamps' squad. Aurelien Tchouameni's father, Fernand, is also Cameroonian while Dayot Upamecano's heritage stems from Guinea-Bissau. Jules Kounde's ancestry stretches back to Nigeria, Togo and Benin, while Eduardo Camavinga was born to Congolese parents in a refugee camp in Angola.

But there are also the Hernandez brothers Lucas and Theo, born in Marseille, who boast Spanish heritage, while Heidi and Cleto Areola, reserve goalkeeper Alphonse's parents, moved to France from the Philippines in the 1980s.

At least eight of the team who defeated Poland in the round of 16 are first-, second- or third-generation migrants to France.

Les Bleus are used to this. In 1998, nine members of their 22-man World Cup winning squad - the celebrated "Black, Blanc, Beur" collective ("Beur" refers to a person of North African ancestry) - were either immigrants or the children of immigrants. They were inspired by the vision of Zinedine Zidane, a stellar talent of Algerian Kabyle descent, and the on-field presence of Marcel Desailly, one of the country's finest centre-halves and a player born in Accra, Ghana.

Lilian Thuram, another stalwart of that side who will see his record of 142 caps for the French men's team eclipsed by Hugo Lloris on Saturday, has previously pointed to victory in that tournament 24 years ago as "a very important moment that helped legitimise immigrants" and fuelled the ongoing fight against racism. For a while, footballing success seemed to unite French society. "Football alone cannot eliminate racism," said Thuram, "but it does have an impact."

Old rifts reopened in the years that followed but in 2018, when the French raised the trophy for a second time, their squad featured 20 players either born outside France or whose parents or grandparents hailed from elsewhere, according to research conducted by Remitly Global for their Together We're Stronger campaign, launched in association with London's Migration Museum. France, once again, rejoiced in its multicultural side's success.

Around 89 per cent of the goals mustered by Deschamps' team through their qualifying campaign for the current tournament were scored by migrants, as defined by Remitly's criteria. (By way of contrast, all Canada's goals in qualifying were netted by players of Caribbean, African and South American descent, while 86 per cent of those scored by the United States were supplied by migrants.)

The Tricolores are out again now, with France galvanised by its team's progress. The players are accepted, cherished and celebrated. And yet this hugely diverse squad arrived in Qatar after a fractious presidential election earlier in the year fought between the centrist Emmanuel Macron and the nationalist Marine Le Pen, a member of the National Assembly for Pas-de-Calais.

If she had won, Le Pen's National Rally (RN) party had promised to hold a referendum with a view to introducing far tighter laws on immigration.

Macron eventually prevailed, but RN still captured a record 89 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly - a rather jarring backdrop to Mbappe et al propelling the nation's defence of the World Cup trophy.

The same diversity applies to England's squad, for whom 82 per cent of the goals scored in qualifying came from players who would be classed as first-, second- or third-generation migrants. So, too, would six of their eight scorers in Qatar to date. Harry Maguire was eligible for both the Republic and Northern Ireland, and is one of several players of Irish heritage in the group. Bukayo Saka's mother, Adenike, was born in Nigeria, while others trace their roots to the Caribbean.

The issue of immigration is as divisive as ever in British society.

Concerns about overcrowding and the strain it places on a struggling economy are voiced regularly, fears repeated by those in charge of the country. Senior politicians have described the influx of asylum seekers as an "invasion" at the same time research by the Oxford Migration Observatory suggests the UK receives far fewer applications per capita than at least 10 other European nations.

But should Gareth Southgate's team progress beyond France, even perhaps into England's first World Cup final since 1966, then those same first-, second- and third-generation migrants propelling the team will be feted by the public and politicians alike.

During the team's journey to the European Championship final last summer, the Migration Museum's Football Moves People campaign made a splash both on social media and billboards across the United Kingdom by pointing out how the players boasted family roots which spanned the globe. As their real-time graphics made clear, there were occasions when "England without immigration" would effectively have boiled down to a team of, at most, three or four.

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