Tijjani Reijnders is the most prominent player with Indonesian heritage at this World Cup. Though Indonesia itself has not qualified, the football-crazed nation laps up any hint of representation at the tournament. Lists of Indonesian-heritage footballers make the rounds online; social media accounts are dedicated to ‘rising ballers’ with Indonesian blood. They have held up their distant sons, Dutch players with Indonesian ancestry such as Giovanni Van Bronckhorst and Ruud Gullit. Today, the name at the top of that list is Tijjani Reijnders.

Reijnders plays for the Netherlands as a left-sided 8 in Ronald Koeman’s 4-3-3. He’s a dynamic, modern midfielder, elegant and quick on his feet. I remember him breaking onto the world stage with AC Milan, scoring goal after goal with bursting runs into the box, eventually being named Serie A’s Midfielder of the Year and earning a move to Manchester City last summer. I would text with Indonesian friends about his rise. We were proud that someone who looked like us was playing stylish football with a smile on his face.

Indonesians, like many other minnows of international football, find what they can to connect to a tournament they have few current ties to. According to FIFA, Indonesia has qualified for the World Cup once: In 1938 as a Dutch colony under the moniker of the Dutch East Indies, the “first Asian side” to compete in the tournament. The players, who wore the famous orange and stood in attention to the Dutch national anthem, were a blend of origins, some were Dutch in Indonesia, while others were indigenous Indonesians and Chinese Indonesians. The team conceded four goals in 30 minutes to Hungary, the eventual finalists, lost 6-0 and scored a single disallowed goal before exiting the tournament. (The Netherlands, who were also at the tournament and lost in the same round, wore the same kits and sang the same anthem.)

For me, watching football was a thing I did in Indonesia. Every four years, my Chinese Indonesian family would save up and trek from Cleveland to Atlanta to Frankfurt to Singapore to Jakarta—48 hours plus another 8 on the bus to Bandung. The World Cup was on during those sweaty summers. I first fell in love with football in 2006 while watching Zidane’s golden boots flick the ball over Ronaldo and curl in a cross to Henry at the backpost for the game’s only goal. I begged my family to drive me to find a bootleg Zidane kit at a market and went catatonic when he was sent off in the final. 

I knew I was Indonesian my whole life, but it was a fact, not a proclamation. An uncle who supports the Indonesian club Persib Bandung was the first to tell me about the complications of being a Chinese Indonesian. He recounted the violence of 1998, when an economic crisis precipitated unrest that particularly harmed Indonesians of Chinese descent, including destruction of property, more than 1,000 deaths, and widespread sexual violence. He didn’t tell me Chinese Indonesians were used as buffers between the Dutch and the indigenous Indonesian population during colonialism, and after, their economic status reflected that twisted privilege. He also whispered that the current president, who was a general under the dictator, allowed the violence to occur in 1998.

For this year’s tournament, many Indonesians are cheering on Tijjani Reijnders. Reijnders, however, doesn’t just have Indonesian heritage. On his right arm is a family tattoo of a parang and salawaku, a traditional machete and shield from the Maluku Islands, where his mother is from. The pair of steel and wood is used in war dances and can represent courage, pride in Moluccan heritage, and the strength of a people. They are also a symbol for Moluccan independence.

Known as the Spice Islands, the Maluku Islands were torn apart in colonial wars and were contested as the Dutch tried to reassert colonial rule after Indonesia declared independence in 1945. Indigenous Moluccans declared their own independent state in 1950 and fought with the Dutch against Indonesian forces but eventually lost. In 1951, during the aftermath of the military defeat, the Dutch moved 12,500 Moluccan soldiers and their families to the Netherlands and immediately discharged them from service. With no clear plan for integrating Moluccans into Dutch society, the Netherlands shuttled them into camps—including former Nazi concentration camps—where, neither welcomed into Dutch society nor able to return to Indonesia, Moluccans remained moored in a limbo that lasted decades. In the 1960s and 70s, some frustrated Moluccans hijacked trains and occupied government buildings to protest their mistreatment, forcing the Netherlands to finally abandon its commitment to Moluccan independence and pivot to providing housing and jobs for their communities.

We don’t know much about the Reijnders family connection to this history. Reijnders has never been to Indonesia. He has stated that his mother is from Indonesia and that her family is from Latuhalat, a village in Ambon, Maluku, but we don’t know if she’s a descendant of those displaced Moluccans of 1951. Regardless, with a Moluccan Indonesian mother and a Dutch father, he himself represents the era of integration for the Moluccan communities living in the Netherlands.

Is there any internal conflict for Reijnders in representing the Netherlands as someone with Moluccan and Dutch blood? His PR training will never let us know. His Dutch father is a former footballer himself who is his agent and helped guide his career. Reijnders said he’s dreamt of playing for the Netherlands since he was a child watching the film “In Orange.” From a sporting perspective, maybe it’s an easy choice to compete for one of the top teams in the world. Footballers only get one short career, but I wonder if there is a twinge of discomfort from his colonized ancestors seeing him sing the Dutch national anthem. There is perhaps just as much twisting and turning in ancestral graves at the fact that Reijnders’ brother Eliano plays for Indonesia.

As football reflects the world, the teams of the Netherlands and Indonesia reflect a truly global story, but it’s one that FIFA will never tell. FIFA’s motto “Football Unites the World” needs heavy clarification (and a new mouthpiece). Football can unite, cause an entire world to sigh and celebrate in the same breath, but it is also just a mirror that shows us the strands of colonial violence stretching across continents. Although the sport can’t change that, it can remind us about it, bearing witness in its own way.

In a recent YouTube video where he shops for football kits, Reijnders was encouraged by the host to try on a matchworn 1991 Indonesia kit. He didn’t end up purchasing the kit, but the photo of him wearing it made the rounds in Indonesia. The kit looks a little small on him. The sleeve bunches up around his armpit. Just below the sleeve, his tattoo of the parang and salawaku pokes out, the kit unable to fully cover its ink.