HOUSTON — As one of the breakout surprise stars of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, German striker Deniz Undav has climbed the tournament’s goal-scoring ranks through a standout run as a substitute. Beyond his on-pitch success, however, the 29-year-old forward carries a far greater weight: he stands as the first global sports representative for two long-persecuted, stateless communities that can never field their own official World Cup side. Born to Yazidi refugee parents and raised in Germany, Undav identifies as a Kurdish Yazidi, and his historic tournament run has sparked overwhelming joy and renewed visibility for Yazidi and Kurdish communities across the Middle East and Europe.
Since entering the German lineup as a substitute, Undav has notched three goals and two assists, putting him just behind tournament leading scorers including Lionel Messi of Argentina, France’s Kylian Mbappé and Brazil’s Vinicius Jr. in the early standings. Speaking to reporters this week, Undav said he hopes his performance inspires young people across the globe, especially those who share his cultural and religious background.
“I always get the news from my parents how they view me, how they see me and it’s making me proud, you know, that we finally have somebody,” he told reporters.
Undav’s roots stretch across the Middle East: his mother traces her family line to a now-abandoned village near Khirbet al-Ghazal, a small Yazidi settlement in northeastern Syria. On Thursday night, dozens of community members gathered in the home of local Yazidi leader Ismail Dalaf to cheer on Undav during Germany’s match against Ecuador, many sharing family ties with the striker’s maternal line. Most residents of Undav’s mother’s original village left decades ago, driven out by economic instability or the violence of Syria’s 15-year civil war.
For Dalaf, Undav’s rise is more than a sports story: it is a cultural turning point.
“Undav’s World Cup performance has made him a symbol that shows Yazidis can reach a higher position and be seen with respect,” Dalaf said in an interview. “When people see a Yazidi entering the field, scoring goals and changing the result of matches, it changes public perception. It tells the world that Yazidis have a role in the world.”
Kurds are the world’s largest stateless ethnic group, with roughly 30 million people living as minorities across Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Yazidis, a Kurdish-speaking monotheistic religious minority with ancient roots in the region, number roughly 1 million globally, with the largest concentration centered in Iraq’s Sinjar region, home to the faith’s most holy Lalish Temple. An estimated 235,000 Yazidis now reside in Germany, most having resettled after the 2014 Islamic State genocide that killed thousands of Yazidi and abducted thousands more, who were labeled heretics by the militant group. Many of those who survived remain displaced to this day.
Irfan Ortac, chair of the Central Council of Yazidis in Germany, said Undav’s success has shifted global conversations about his community away from endless stories of trauma.
“Until now, we have mostly been known as victims of violence,” Ortac said. “Whenever we spoke about Yazidis, we always had to talk about genocide, discrimination, and displacement. It makes us very proud and happy to be able to talk about something positive.”
In Iraq, the global center of Yazidi life, community leaders have also embraced Undav’s run. “It makes me very happy to see a Yazidi bringing our name to the World Cup and playing in front of the whole world,” said Luqman Sleiman, spokesperson for the Lalish Temple. Diyar Bakir, a 29-year-old Yazidi from Sinjar whose community survived the 2014 IS onslaught, said he dreams of traveling to Germany one day to watch Undav play in person.
“His family came from a place where his ethnicity and religion were not appreciated, yet he is now recognized and valued by a great team like Germany,” Bakir said. “He emerged from the womb of suffering, and we wish him every success.”
Undav’s path to stardom has not been without hostility. He has faced repeated online and in-person abuse targeting his Yazidi-Kurdish heritage. Last year, when his club VfB Stuttgart played an away match against Turkey’s Fenerbahce, the striker was targeted with obscene chants about his mother. Two Kurdish anti-discrimination organizations documented a surge in racist, ethnically motivated insults targeting Undav on social media after the match. The striker also faced backlash from some Turkish fans after choosing to represent Germany at the international level, rather than Turkey, a path other German-born players of Turkish heritage have taken.
But amid the abuse, Undav’s popularity has skyrocketed, and his presence has sparked a broader shift in conversations about migration, identity and belonging in Germany, a country that has welcomed millions of refugees from the Middle East over the past two decades.
Düzen Tekkal, a German documentary filmmaker and author of Kurdish Yazidi heritage who co-founded Scoring Girls, a nonprofit that offers free soccer programming to girls from marginalized backgrounds, said the “Deniz Undav effect” extends far beyond the soccer pitch.
“There definitely is a Deniz Undav effect and it’s very important,” Tekkal said. “It lets children who share our heritage celebrate who they are and feel they belong in Germany at a time when migration is often treated as a political problem. It is no coincidence that he plays with this lightness and freedom. People are asking how come he’s so good under pressure or he can cope with so much pressure? Because he doesn’t know it any other way. That is the DNA, that is the resilience. … That’s how he scores these goals because what is that pressure compared to being Kurdish or Yazidi?”
After scoring against Curacao in the team’s opening group stage match, Undav celebrated with a traditional Yazidi jig, hands clasped behind his back. He was joined in the dance by German star Antonio Rüdiger, a Black German player who has faced repeated racist and anti-Muslim abuse throughout his career. Tekkal called the moment one of the most iconic of the entire tournament, regardless of how Germany fares in the coming matches.
“Dancing is a form of expressing resistance for us,” Tekkal emphasized. “We dance on the graves of our dead. Our mantra is that resistance is life. He’s dancing there for his forefathers who were oppressed.”
For many stateless Kurdish fans, Undav’s run gives them a team to cheer for at the World Cup, the global stage that excludes stateless communities by rule. Mahmoud Kanabi, a Kurd from Irbil who moved to Berlin in 2020 and works at a Kurdish restaurant in the city, bought his first ever Germany jersey this year because of Undav.
“Unfortunately, for us Kurds, we don’t have a team because we don’t have a country,” Kanabi said. “Now, when a Kurdish player is in a team, we have to be fans of it. It doesn’t matter what team it is.”
Reporting for this article was contributed by Martany in Irbil, Iraq; Fahey in Berlin; Ellingworth in Duesseldorf, Germany; and AP Sports Writer Ron Blum in East Rutherford, New Jersey. This coverage is part of AP’s religion reporting partnership with The Conversation US, supported by funding from Lilly Endowment Inc., with the AP solely responsible for all content.