For the Unrecognized, A Cup of Their Own

LONDON — Sixteen soccer teams from places largely excluded from international sport and diplomacy — among them Tibet, Tamil Eelam, Cascadia and Matabeleland — seized the chance to play in an alternative World Cup here in the British capital.

Coming from regions not recognized as nations by most of the world, the teams cannot be in the FIFA World Cup.

“By taking part, we can achieve visibility internationally for our people and our cause,” said Ferhat Mehenni, the president of the provisional government of Kabylia, a region in the Atlas Mountains of Algeria.

His team of Kabyls and their families were subject to intimidation from the Algerian authorities ahead of the tournament, Mr. Mehenni said, speaking from France, where he is in exile.

Per Anders Blind, the president of the Confederation of Independent Football Associations, or Conifa, said he wanted the tournament’s focus to be on the games, not politics. But that is difficult, he said, when so many players and fans yearn for their regions to be internationally recognized.

“Of course we are controversial,” he said. “We are crazy underdogs.”

This year’s tournament, the third iteration, was played on the outskirts of London.

Conifa has 47 members, ranging from areas with fully functioning governments, like Iraqi Kurdistan, to those seeking to raise awareness of their political struggles, like the Roma and the Koreans of Japan. Delvidek ( Hungarians in Serbia), Greenland, Barawa (in Somalia) and the Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine are all members. Cascadia is a proposed country that includes the Pacific Northwest in the United States and parts of Canada. Tamil Eelam is the Tamil-majority areas of Sri Lanka. Matabeleland is in Zimbabwe.

The first Conifa World Cup was held in the northern Swedish city of Ostersund, in 2014 — not far from where Mr. Blind’s family, who belong to Sweden’s indigenous Sami minority, herd their reindeer.

For the 2016 games, the Republic of Abkhazia, a breakaway region in Georgia, rolled out lavish hospitality. For a nation recognized only by Russia and a handful of others, hosting sporting events has come to be an important way to lay claim to being an independent state. In 2011, the World Domino Federation’s recognition of Abkhazia was seen as a breakthrough by politicians in Abkhazia’s working capital, Sukhumi, where the game has a passionate following.

At this year’s Conifa opening ceremony, held in the home stadium of Bromley FC, local soccer fans cheered alongside a dizzying global mix of diasporas, and the occasional political scientist. Many of the crowd had bitter words to say about FIFA, soccer’s official international governing body, which

Using a sport to bolster claims of sovereignty.

has been fending off corruption accusations since the 2018 World Cup was awarded to Russia.

Alexandr Kogonia, 22, a midfielder for the Abkhazia team, said that fan support for teams in Abkhazia had increased since the tournament and that playing in London only increased exposure for the sport.

In the final on June 9, Karpatalya, a Hungarian-speaking minority in Western Ukraine, defeated Northern Cyprus, a state recognized only by Turkey, in a shootout, after playing to a 0- 0 tie.

The defending champion, Abkhazia, was knocked out in an earlier round. But the memory of the 2016 triumph still shone for Boris Adleyba, 25, a student from Abkhazia, now studying in Moscow, who had flown to London to support his team. “People in Abkhazia say that the World Cup in 2016 was one of the happiest events since 1992,” he said.

That was the year Abkhazia began its war with Georgia.