Born in Brooklyn, Raised in London, Playing for America: How Folarin Balogun Became a U.S. Citizen and a USMNT Player

By Michael Phillips | Riptide

Folarin Balogun’s mother, a Nigerian national living in London, flew to New York in 2001 to visit her sister — seven months pregnant. When she showed up for her return flight, the airline took one look at her and said no; she was too far along to board. She stayed. Folarin Balogun was born in Brooklyn on July 3, 2001, one day before America’s own birthday, a coincidence U.S. Soccer’s fan base would later treat as something closer to fate. By the end of August, mother and newborn were back in London, and Balogun wouldn’t set foot in the country of his birth again for years.

That accident of geography made him an American citizen automatically, permanently, and for reasons that had nothing to do with soccer.

That accident of geography made him an American citizen automatically, permanently, and for reasons that had nothing to do with soccer. It also set up, twenty-two years later, one of the more genuinely difficult decisions in recent U.S. Soccer history: a player raised entirely in England, developed in Arsenal’s academy, capped 28 times for England’s youth teams, who had to choose — irrevocably — which of three countries would get his career.

A Decision You Can’t Take Back

“That’s you in life, it’s fixed, you can’t change it.”
— Folarin Balogun on choosing a national team

Club football has an escape hatch built in: if a transfer doesn’t work out, a player leaves. International football doesn’t. Balogun has described the choice in stark terms, telling HBO’s U.S. Against the World documentary that once you commit to a national team, unlike a club, “that’s you in life, it’s fixed, you can’t change it.” That permanence sat on him for years. He’d risen through England’s system from under-17 to under-21 level, racking up 28 caps and looking, to most observers, like a future Three Lions regular. He’d also picked up four caps with the U.S. under-18s, almost as a hedge. And by blood, Nigeria’s Super Eagles wanted him too.

The club math complicated things further. Arsenal, his boyhood team, couldn’t get him consistent first-team minutes, and he cycled through loan spells at Middlesbrough and in France searching for playing time. England’s senior forward pool, meanwhile, was suffocatingly deep. The United States had the opposite problem entirely: a program hungry for a true No. 9, with Josh Sargent and Haji Wright as the incumbents and no one entrenched enough to block a path to minutes.

Born in Brooklyn by chance. Playing for America by choice.

In March 2023, Balogun visited a USMNT camp in Florida. Word got out, and fans who had been campaigning for him online showed up in person to make their case. He didn’t wait to see whether England would come calling first — he committed to the United States on the spot, without an English call-up in hand, and made his senior debut for the Americans that summer. When he broke the news to his family, his mother needed five words, later relayed to ESPN: “What took you so long?”

Making It Official

Family approval didn’t make him eligible on its own. FIFA still had to sign off, through a process entirely separate from anything happening in his living room.

Under FIFA’s eligibility rules, holding a nationality is necessary to represent a country — but for a player with more than one valid nationality, it isn’t sufficient by itself. FIFA layers on connection requirements: birth in the country, a parent or grandparent born there, or a period of residence. Balogun cleared the bar for all three of his countries at once — born in the U.S., raised in England, and Nigerian by both parents. What actually resolves a three-way case like his is the cap-tie system: a senior appearance for a federation locks a player in permanently, but youth-level caps never do, which is why his U-18 and U-21 appearances for two different countries settled nothing on their own. His one-time change of association to the United States — the actual paperwork behind the Florida decision — was approved by FIFA on May 16, 2023.

The Payoff

Three years later, in the U.S.’s World Cup opener against Paraguay, Balogun scored twice in a 4-1 win — the first American to score multiple goals in a World Cup match since 1930. Christian Pulisic, watching from the same forward line, put it plainly to reporters afterward: “The kid is insane.” When Balogun was subbed off in the 71st minute, the crowd gave him a standing ovation.

The same fan base that recruited him ultimately became the fan base he wanted to reward.

Asked what the moment meant after three years and one World Cup game, Balogun kept the answer short: he wanted to keep proving to the fans who’d shown up for him in Florida that he’d made the right call. It was the same fan base, he said, that had given him the motivation to choose the United States in the first place — and repaying it, in his words, had “always been” the point.

He is not the only player at this World Cup who chose a flag over a birthplace. Morocco’s Ayyoub Bouaddi captained France’s under-21s before switching countries weeks before the tournament; Sweden’s Yasin Ayari picked his birth country over his father’s Tunisia and then scored twice against them. The Associated Press has called this the biggest melting pot in World Cup history. Balogun’s version just happens to have started with a grounded flight in Brooklyn in 2001, and ended with FIFA’s paperwork catching up to a decision he’d already made in Florida twenty-two years later.

Balogun’s story started with a grounded flight in Brooklyn in 2001—and ended with FIFA’s paperwork catching up to a decision he’d already made in Florida twenty-two years later.

Sourcing: Balogun’s birth circumstances and his mother Florence’s account of the 2001 flight are per ESPN. His HBO documentary quote on the permanence of international commitment, the March 2023 Florida training camp, the fan campaign, and his mother’s reaction are per Yahoo Sports’ reporting on the HBO series U.S. Against the World: Four Years With the Men’s National Soccer Team. Christian Pulisic’s remarks, the Paraguay match details, and the standing ovation are per NBC News and NBC4 Washington. Balogun’s own comments on repaying the fans are per ESPN. FIFA eligibility mechanics and the Bouaddi and Ayari cases are per Associated Press reporting via Fox Sports. The May 16, 2023 approval of his one-time change of association is per U.S. Soccer’s official player records and ESPN. Constitutional background: U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1; United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898).

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