There is a story about diasporic football allegiance that the European press tells. It is a story about identity confusion and split loyalty and the difficulty of choosing.
The actual experience is more interesting.
Watching AFCON as a second-generation North African in France, or Belgium, or the Netherlands, is not a moment of confusion. It is a moment of clarity. The flags come out. The Whatsapp groups light up. The cafés open early for the morning kickoffs. The community organises itself around the tournament in ways it does not organise around the European leagues that most of the same viewers also watch.
This is not split loyalty. This is layered loyalty. The same person who watches Mbappé score for France can root for Algeria against Burkina Faso the following night without any internal contradiction. The contradictions are projected onto these viewers by outsiders who imagine they should be a problem.
Third-generation viewers are different. The relationship is more attenuated. The Arabic comprehension is partial. The cultural connection is mediated through the parents' nostalgia rather than through direct experience.
What this produces is a football audience that is more sophisticated about national identity than almost any other group in European football. They have lived the complexity. They know it is not a problem to solve. The European press has not caught up to this, mostly because the European press is mostly not staffed by people who have lived it.