Australia’s Awer Mabil, Thomas Deng and Garang Kuol were each born to refugee parents from war-torn South Sudan. On Tuesday, the trio of Socceroos will step onto a World Cup pitch for the first time to take on defending champions France, a nation that has built much of its recent football success on players of African descent.
For Mabil, at 27 the oldest of the three, Tuesday’s fixture at the brand-new Al-Janoub Stadium caps an extraordinary personal journey from the dirt pitches of his childhood in a Kenyan refugee camp to the air-conditioned stadiums of Qatar.
