National soccer as part of the nationalist myth

We have been raised in modern times as having one nation with one flag, one anthem, one army, one currency, one language... and also one soccer national team and one soccer national league. In the last decades, the notion has been eroded, at least in Europe, by the creation of a shared common currency, shared military alliances, the expansion of multilinguism and the integration of societies and economies... and the UEFA Champions League in soccer. The recent surge of nativist movements is perhaps a desperate reaction against these trends. Still, national soccer teams and national leagues have too much appeal (to my taste) to believe that the forces of internationalism are prevailing. Although soccer has become a global industry and fans follow all great games from any place in the world, national institutions still have too much power and are a barrier to the expansion of a more attractive soccer. Of course, the removal of these barriers should go hand in hand with a removal of the absolute power of FIFA, perhaps with the creation of a more professional and globally regulated body. I am relatively optimistic about the decline of most national leagues. Only a few of them can survive as relevant in an integrated industry. Even if now the English Premier League looks as dominant, we still have to see how it will survive if Brexit becomes a true hard Brexit (to be seen). If it does survive, the other European leagues will have to decide how to put up a better European league, perhaps a super-league where we see all year around games like the ones we see from the quarter finals to the final of the Champions League every year (only two months of really good games). I am more pessimistic about the decline of national teams. Tournaments between national teams have become more and not less competitive and interesting, because as Branko Milanovic once argued, the institutional rules are such that all good players from any country can only play for one national team, so most of them benefit from having a more competitive industry at the club level, which delivers best top players for every country. Hopefully, games between national teams will become like games of "Calcio Storico" in Florence or Siena: fights between two teams wearing clothes with meaningless colours.