The Return of Colombia to Football’s World Stage: Measuring its Impact on the Nation's Youth

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The Return of Colombia to Football’s World Stage: Measuring its Impact on the Nation's Youth

WORDS Maya Davis
CONTRIBUTIONS Jasper Broad & Marvin Heilbronn
PHOTOGRAPHY Maya Davis

July 7 2026

After failing to qualify for the World Cup in 2022, Colombia has returned to the global stage with long-bottled ambition. For the squad travelling to North America, the tournament presents a chance to prove themselves on the international stage. For the millions of Colombian fans, abroad and domestic, the 2026 World Cup is a cause to rally behind during a contentious presidential election season. Policy debates between Colombia’s political right and left have increasingly clashed in recent months with sharp disagreements on how to address urban crime, unemployment, drug trafficking, inflation and armed groups operating in rural areas. (1)

Beyond momentarily unifying the polarized electorate, Colombia’s return to the World Cup is having another positive effect: providing the country’s youth a way forward through football. Colombia’s return to the global football stage after eight years is providing young players a renewed sense of possibility. This paper will examine how participating in and succeeding at the World Cup impacts the cornerstone of society: youth. Professional, semi-professional, and amateur football federations have long touted their youth development processes, and the World Cup has only heightened pressure to showcase them as pipelines for national success. While these pathways gain global media attention for developing national team stars, non-profit footballing organizations and their impact on community and football development often go overlooked.

Photos by Maya Davis (all)

An Introduction to Fundación Habilidosos

As Colombia’s World Cup squad touched down for their first game in Guadalajara, Mexico, a group of 26 boys gathered on René Higuita field on the hillside of Medellín’s Comuna 5. Unlike the local team they are facing off against, these boys come from all over the country. Their backgrounds have been marked by armed conflict, gang violence, family drug use, domestic abuse, poverty, and homelessness. They were selected by the nonprofit Fundación Habilidosos to play in Medellín, living under one roof and training daily with the dream of becoming professional footballers.

The team’s motto is “a muerte” — “until death” — for football is the way up. During a halftime speech, head coach Gabriel Ortega was observed telling the team that if they don’t want to play hard, they can go back to where they came from. Ortega’s comment can be understood as an empty threat, but dialogue and quotes from his players emphasize the danger of returning home.

When Wilmar Mosquera, a 19-year-old centre-back from the western province of Quibdó, wanted to return home, a guardian called the foundation and pleaded with them to convince him to stay. “She told us please don’t send him back to me because armed groups outside the law are causing a lot of trouble,” said Giovanni Correa, director of projects at the foundation.

“Football is my life. I love it very much. I also came back because of a promise I made to my mother,” said Mosquera, who lost his mother at 16. “It’s what every footballer wants. To become a professional player and help my family move forward. That’s really it.”

Individual Player Brilliance as Motivation for a Nation’s Youth

While distance from home weighs heavily on many members of the team, the foundation says the motivation the World Cup brings is not something they take for granted. The staff has used the tournament to show young players that a professional football career is within reach. As José Ramírez, a foundation administrator, put it, "El fútbol es una causa" — "football is a cause." It's a phrase that captures how deeply the sport itself can serve as a source of inspiration.

“Seeing these opportunities in professional football is important because it is each and every one of their dreams. It’s more than a motivation. It’s a power to continue,” Ramirez added. When the boys at the foundation are impacted by homesickness, many think of football stars on TV. Often, they focus on the salaries.

Ascending through national clubs to European leagues is a key path for many Colombian players. Luis Díaz, a star attacker on the country’s national team, rose from the marginalized municipality of Barrancas to play in Portugal, England and Germany. Today, his name is on the back of jerseys sold on street corners across the country. He’s earning approximately €14 million this season at Bayern Munich, excluding bonuses. (2) “Many Colombian national team players now play in Europe. Because they play there, they are respected and recognized around the world.

“What we want our young players to understand is that those players are their fellow Colombians. If they can achieve those things, our kids can too,” said Ortega. With 13 of the 26 members on Colombia’s World Cup roster having played football in Europe, the path from local clubs to global leagues has become a visible model of possibility for teams like Fundación Habilidosos.

National Team Success as Motivation for a Nation’s Youth

Colombia’s successful World Cup runs historically translate into international opportunities for the nation’s promising young players. In 2014, Colombia reached the quarterfinals, their best-ever finish, and star midfielder James Rodríguez clinched FIFA’s coveted Golden Boot and Puskás Award. Fundación Habilidosos recorded that, following this run, more talent scouts and agents came to the country and to the club to watch practice that year. Two of their players were subsequently selected to play in the nation of Latvia. “I would like [the FIFA audience] to watch us play, and through that, discover players and give them opportunities outside of here,” said Jair Mendoza Valois, a 20-year-old defender on the Fundación Habilidosos team. “Those are opportunities that don’t come around all the time.”

Studies show young people are the group most influenced by the trickle-down effects of elite athletes’ success (3). When kids can identify and connect with athlete role models, they are twice as likely to play sports regularly (4). This effect was pronounced during Colombia’s 2014 World Cup run, which ended in a 2-1 defeat to the host nation, Brazil. In the weeks following the game, football academy enrollment in the nation’s capital city of Bogotá jumped 60% (5). A large part of Fundación Habilidosos’s work is keeping kids on the field, within the group, and away from danger. Years like 2014 point to that work paying off. When Colombia misses a World Cup, there's a drought of visible examples that make the dream feel tangible. “Colombians always have this hope of experiencing a World Cup. It’s something difficult to miss, honestly, a feeling that can’t be explained … it affects personal life a lot,” said Santiago Cuadros, a 19-year-old football player who lives in Medellín’s Comuna 9. Cuadros sells World Cup jerseys at a street stand in the city center and hopes to have his own soccer club one day. “It’s already been eight years without going to the World Cup. So, it’s incredible joy, and with the team we have, we’re going to bring it home for the people,” Cuadros added.

Morocco’s 2022 World Cup run offers another notable contemporary example of how a nation’s World Cup success impacts youth football participation and development. In 2022, the Moroccan team reached the semifinals – becoming the first African and Arab nation to reach that stage of the World Cup. Before 2022, the farthest Morocco had advanced at the global football stage was to the early knockout round in the 1986 World Cup. Morocco’s 2022 success, which saw them defeating major European nations, such as Portugal in the quarterfinals, had a profound impact on enrollment in youth development centers. The Mohammed VI Football Academy near the capital city of Rabat experienced the biggest impact. The academy was built in 2010 for roughly $13 million after Morocco had failed to qualify for the World Cup and would go on to produce four homegrown players for the country’s 2022 squad. After the 2022 run, the federation expanded to 12 regional academies nationwide (6). Today, the academy scouts from remote southern regions and disputed territories to expand access beyond the capital’s wealthy urban centers. Their mission directly aligns with the accessibility and youth-opportunity angle seen on the other side of the world in Medellin’s Fundación Habilidosos. As a result of this enhanced youth-development focus, Morocco has sustained success on the global football stage. When the nation won the 2025 U-20 World Cup, the federation explicitly tied the win to the youth investment that followed 2022. Moroccan head coach Walid Regragui has reaffirmed the impact of youth development, stating that “Qatar was not a miracle” but rather “the fruit of a long-term plan (7).”

The Prospective Legacy of Colombia’s 2026 World Cup

Considering the Colombian team’s success in the early rounds of the 2026 tournament where they topped their group, Colombian football appears to be entering a period of renewed growth. The dream of professional football success is vivid, not only for the Fundación Habilidosos team, but for young players across the country. In the hills above where Ortega is plotting formations, and Valois and Mosquera are lacing up their cleats, kids are turning any available surface into soccer fields. “We play in the street, we play on the beach, we play futsal too, we play under the full sun during the day, we play barefoot,” said Cuadros.

Nine-year-old Emmanuel Valencia plays on a graffiti-painted concrete swath between two staircases that lead up through the sprawling houses of the infamous Comuna 13. Two plastic goals, each no more than three feet tall, sit on either side of the swath. A chain-link fence stops his ball from taking a steep tumble into the houses below. “I’m Richard Ríos,” said Valencia when asked if he was going to be the next Luis Díaz during an impromptu pick-up game. Ríos, a midfielder on the World Cup team from the same province of Antioquia, grew up playing futsal and street soccer.

Colombia offers strong evidence of the trickle-down effect of individual stars and national team success, particularly in programs like Fundación Habilidosos. The national team’s potential matchups and results in the knockout stage carry significance beyond the future of the national team. Success on the international stage can also shape the aspirations, opportunities, and socioeconomic prospects of the nation’s youth. Somewhere between qualification and the final whistle, a World Cup run has the power to convince a generation that a dream is real, and shape who a nation's children grow up wanting to become. Qualification on its own has been a powerful tool, and the closing segment of the tournament holds the potential to dictate the direction of Colombian football even more so. Based on evidence of elite athletes' impact on youth participation, and the precedent set by Colombia's 2014 run, Colombia's performance at the 2026 World Cup may shape the dreams and opportunities of the young players watching it unfold, planting the seeds for the players who may take the global stage a decade from now, donning the iconic, blazing yellow jersey.

Endnotes

1. Llorente, María V., and Joaquin Sarmiento. 2026. “The Unfulfilled Promises of Colombia's Peace Process.” Americas Quarterly. https://www.americasquarterly.org/article/the-unfulfilled-promises-of-colombias-peace-process/.

2. Capology. n.d. “Luis Díaz Salary Profile.” Capology. Accessed July 2, 2026. https://www.capology.com/player/luis-diaz-35443/.

3. Potwarka, Luke R., and Pamela Wicker. 2020. “Conditions under Which Trickle-Down Effects Occur: A Realist Synthesis Approach.” Sustainability 13, no. 69 (December): 1-17. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347952718_Conditions_under_Which_Trickle-Down_Effects_Occur_A_Realist_Synthesis_Approach.

4. Kelly, Eimear, Katie Liston, Aoife Lane, and Kieran Dowd. 2024. “The Influence of role models on participation in sport and physical activity among young males and females in Ireland.” European Journal of Public Health 34, no. 2 (September). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/384376523_239_The_Influence_of_role_models_on_participation_in_sport_and_physical_activity_among_young_males_and_females_in_Ireland.

5. Redacción Semana. 2014. “Escuelas de fútbol en su mejor momento.” Semana. https://www.semana.com/empresas/articulo/aumentan-inscripciones-escuelas-futbol-participacion-seleccion-colombia/198761/.

6. Kinyanjui, Mark. 2026. “From Medina Streets to World Cup Dreams: How Morocco Built a Football Powerhouse.” Striver.Football. https://striver.football/the-pathway/morocco-football-development.

7. Hamid, Ashraf, Ashraf H. Atta, and Clare Fallon. 2025. “Morocco look to youth and experience to prove Qatar World Cup success was no fluke.” Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/sports/soccer/morocco-look-youth-experience-prove-qatar-world-cup-success-was-no-fluke-2025-12-04/.

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