DOHA – Something exciting is happening in the World Cup: The five teams representing Africa in the tournament have African coaches.

This may not sound exceptional. Gregg Berhalter, who coaches the United States team, is a New Jersey native; Hansi Flick, who manages the German squad, hails from Heidelberg.

But typically, African national teams have relied on European coaches – mostly unknown in their home countries, effectively mercenaries bouncing around the world – when big tournaments come around.

If an African country hired an African coach, he would be summarily fired right before a big tournament, even if he took the team through the qualifiers.

Not this year.

Of the five African coaches, four made their careers in top-tier European football: Aliou Cisse was born in Senegal and Rigobert Song in Cameroon. But both made their careers in the Premier League.

Cisse immigrated to France when he was young. Song had played in his second World Cup before joining Liverpool in 1999.

Walid Regragui was born outside Paris and played for a string of French teams before starting a coaching career in Morocco.

Otto Addo, who is coaching the Ghanaian team, was born and grew up in Hamburg and played in the German Bundesliga.

Only Jalel Kadri is a product of his home country’s leagues, having played and coached in Tunisia.

African football is discovering the power of the diaspora. Of course, there’s a long history of the black diaspora playing a part in events on the continent: Kwame Nkrumah, the Ghanaian independence leader, incorporated pan-Africanist thought by way of America and Britain into his programme when he took power in 1957.

Since the era of democratisation in the early 1990s, some African countries and their leaders – in Senegal and Ghana, for example – have been more open to the political and economic power, and expertise of the diaspora beyond mere remittances.

That seems to have accelerated in the new century. And we are increasingly watching this kind of solidarity on the football field.

Take Cisse, the coach for Senegal. He has been at his coaching job the longest and is probably the most interesting of the lot.

He was appointed in 2015 and led them in the 2018 World Cup, in which the team performed admirably and was eliminated only through the fair-play tiebreak. Under him, Senegal won the 2022 Africa Cup of Nations.

But it is not just his winning record that keeps Cisse in the job. Another reason for his longevity is that he understands the pressures on his players. He was captain of the last great Senegal team, the 2002 squad.

That side shocked everyone at the World Cup in South Korea and Japan by beating the defending champions, France, in the opening match and making it as far as the quarter-finals. All these on their debut in the Finals.

Cisse understands that he derives his strength as a coach from his deep connection to Senegal. In an interview this year, he said that people from the diaspora understand their home countries in a way that outsiders cannot.

He cited technical and tactical expertise as crucial to successful coaching, but added: “It’s also important to know about the country’s past. For me, if you don’t know about the past, it’s difficult to talk about the future.”

The prominence of coaches like Cisse comes as African countries’ relationship with their diasporas is changing. There are now millions of African immigrants and their descendants in Europe. From Algerians who moved to France in the 1960s to near-daily arrivals of irregular African migrants in Italy today, Europe has been becoming blacker for decades.

Even as these groups are integrated – and shape popular culture, politics, the economy and, of course, sports – many still maintain some allegiance to their ancestral homes and go back to visit regularly, send remittances and follow Moroccan or Cameroonian news as closely as they would in Marrakesh or Yaounde. And social media cements this relationship even further.

But there is another important change under way, reflective of the rising power and relevance of Africa to Europe. African players are increasingly on the centre stage of world football.

Though African players have a long history in Europe, it was not until the mid-1990s that they began to star in the top leagues there.

At first, they were signed for their “speed” and “natural strength”. But coaches like Jose Mourinho and Roberto Mancini also appreciated their skill, leadership and smarts.

Players like Michael Essien, Didier Drogba, John Obi-Mikel, Samuel Eto’o and Yaya Toure became global stars by the first decade of the 21st century.

Sadio Mane of Senegal was a key part of Liverpool’s attack for years. His national teammate, defender Kalidou Koulibaly, captained Napoli before joining Chelsea.

Today, a majority of Africans – like most football fans across the world – follow the top European leagues. Football in this way cultivates a sort of pan-African identity, even if it is only for 90 minutes at a time.

And there is a kind of continental solidarity that emerges for many African fans during the World Cup.

If your home country’s team have made it, you first support them; when they get eliminated, you support whichever African side who are doing well.

As the novelist Chimamanda Adichie put it during the 2010 World Cup, your “nationalism expands its boundaries as your country loses”.

The results have been mixed. Morocco and Senegal, after stumbling in their opening games, have bounced back with victories, with Senegal reaching the round of 16 by beating Ecuador 2-1 on Tuesday.

Cameroon, Ghana and Tunisia have been less convincing. But as Argentina’s loss to Saudi Arabia or Germany’s to Japan remind us, the World Cup can be full of surprises.

No team from Africa have yet made it beyond the quarter-finals of the World Cup. But the millions watching across the continent in 2022 are cheering on these new coaches, and hoping for the impossible. NYTIMES