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Sweden player’s World Cup debut comes vs dad’s home country Tunisia
Updated June 14, 2026, 10:13 p.m. ET
MONTERREY, Mexico – When Swedish midfielder Yasin Ayari steps onto the field for his first-ever 2026 World Cup game, it will be more than a debut on the game’s biggest stage for the 22-year-old. Ayari will be facing the other path that his international career could have taken.Ā
Ayari and his Swedish teammates will take on Tunisia, the country where Ayari’s father was born and raised.
Tunisia’s manager Sabri Lamouchi, who is trying to lead his team out of the group stage for the first time in World Cup history, knows Ayari is a tough loss for his team.
āI know him and his brother,” Lamouchi said. “He made a choice, I have a lot of respect, and he’s a very good player. We wish him after the game best of luck, but that is after the game.ā
In 2021, Tunisiaās representatives approached Ayari with an offer to switch his allegiance and play for the African side in the 2022 World Cup. Ayari decided to stick with his birth country. His father, Azzouz Ayari, believed his son should pay back the country he was born in.
āMy son wanted to play for Tunisia, but I asked him to represent Sweden instead, as it is the country that welcomed and developed him,” Azzouz Ayari said in May in an interview with Aftonbladet. “It was his duty to give something back.ā
For Ayari, the choice made sense once he and his father discussed the possibilities.Ā
āI was born in Sweden and feel Swedish, and Sweden is the country I want to represent,ā
Brooks Thomason is a student in the University of Georgia’s Carmical Sports Media Institute.
