Ireland may not have made it to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, but Irish fans can - albeit distantly - claim Argentina's Alexis Mac Allister as one of their own.
Mac Allister is set to line out with Argentina, alongside the famed Lionel Messi, when they take on Spain on Sunday, July 19, for the 2026 FIFA World Cup final in New Jersey.
The pro soccer player has caught Ireland's attention for his Irish-sounding surname - and, yes, red hair.
In 2020, Mac Allister's father Carlos clarified that their surname is indeed Irish, not Scottish.
“According to our family, we came from Ireland, rather than Scotland,” Carlos told The Athletic at the time.
“We came to Argentina, to a place called Pergamino, but that was three or four generations ago, and later my father and mother married and moved to a different place — Santa Rosa in the Province of La Pampa, which is where Alexis was born.
“Now, when we get together, they always say that our ancestors came from Ireland. I don’t know whether the ones before them were from Scotland, and went to Ireland from Scotland, and then our ancestors came here. But we say that we came from Ireland.”
Probably not surprisingly, when Mac Allister was set to take the field with Argentina in the 2022 FIFA World Cup final - which Argentina ultimately won - the hunt was on for his Irish cousins.
One of those, albeit distant, cousins was Noel Mac Allister, of Donabate in Dublin. He explained to RTÉ in 2022 how some of the family ended up in Argentina.
Noel said that in 1865 or 1866, his great-grandfather's brother Joseph MacAllister went "all the way down to Argentina" from Dublin on sailing boats. Joseph was later joined by his two nephews, John and William, and the family settled in Peragimo, a city to the north-west of Buenos Aires, where many Irish people had already settled.
For several decades in the 20th century, the link between Ireland and Argentina was nearly nonexistent.
However, a 2002 Irish Times article traces how the connection was rekindled.
Dickie McAllister was one of a group who showed Ireland's then-Foreign Minister Dick Spring around the Buenos Aires Hurling Club, where Dickie was secretary, in 1995.
Upon his return to Ireland, Spring wrote about his visit in The Irish Times. A man in Dublin - Frank McAllister - saw Dickie McAllister's photo in the Irish Times and decided to write to him.
"And that's how I found my Irish relatives," Dickie said in 2002.
Balls.ie later reported that Frank asked Dickie if he knew anything about his family heritage, as Frank knew he had Argentinian relatives. Dickie admitted he didn't know much about his Irish roots - but he did have a photo of where his great-great-grandfather had come from in Ireland.
The house in Dickie's photograph was the McAllister family homestead in Donabate, Dublin, where Joseph Mac Allister had left from so many years ago.
In 2023, Balls.ie spoke with Co Meath man Philip McAllister, whose father was a cousin of Frank. Philip met and spent several months with the Argentinian McAllisters when he was traveling in Latin America in 2006.
"I knock on the door in Argentina, door opens to a whole big family of McAllisters - Dickies, and Monserrats, and Pablos, and Elaynes, and Kevins, and Michaels, and Johns - the whole lot of them.
“The older generation that were still alive, they all spoke English with a Dublin accent!
“The proof was that photo [of the house] - they had no idea. We had lost contact, they had lost contact, this was the rejoining of the family.
"I stayed there for three months hanging out with them - fabulous people."
But back to Alexis, who, like his father, is aware of his Irish roots.
"The surname Mac Allister comes from Ireland," the pro soccer player told the Olympics website in 2022.
In 2024, he said of his surname during an interview: "It is Irish. I don't know why many, many people think it's Scottish. It's actually Irish.
"A couple of months or weeks ago, I received a letter from my family in Ireland asking me to go there one day.
"Yeah, I would love to."
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