Yasin Ayari will make his World Cup debut for Sweden against Tunisia, turning a routine group opener into a match shaped by family as much as football. The 22-year-old midfielder said the choice to represent Sweden was simple, even with a Tunisian father and a Moroccan mother.
That is why the fixture matters now. Sweden open Group F against Tunisia at 10pm Sunday ET, 3am Monday BST, and Ayari is already one of the faces of the side after coming through Sweden from under-17 level to the senior team. He was born in Sweden, has played for the national team at every stage since then, and said his path never felt complicated. His father, who moved to Sweden to chase a football career as a winger and No 10, later coached him in a local team. Ayari also said his father told him, “You decide what you want to do.”
The midfielder’s rise has been steady rather than sudden. Spotted at age eight by AIK, he later joined Brighton in January 2023 and has started regularly for Sweden since Graham Potter took charge last October. Potter arrived when qualification was still in doubt and, Ayari said, brought calm to a group that needed it. That helped Sweden reach the tournament after beating Poland 3-2 in a UEFA play-off final in March, when Ayari set up the opening goal before Viktor Gyokeres scored the 88th-minute winner.
For Ayari, that March night still sits at the centre of the story. He described the feeling after the win as “Joy. Just joy,” and said it meant more because his family, friends and teammates were there to share it. His younger brother Taha is a winger at AIK, and his mother also works behind the scenes at the club, keeping the football thread close at home. He said he wanted the best for his parents too, and that he spent time in Tunisia and Morocco as a child during holidays, but the national-team decision never wavered.
The friction is obvious: Sweden’s opener is against Tunisia, the country his father is from, while his mother’s side links him to Morocco as well. Ayari did not frame that as a dilemma. He framed it as identity. Sweden is the team that took him from youth football to the senior side, and the first test of his World Cup career will now come against the country that gives his name an extra layer of meaning. What happens next is simple, and heavy at the same time: on Sunday night ET, Sweden begin the tournament, and Ayari steps into it carrying both the shirt he chose and the ties he was born into.
