In 1990, during the Somali Civil War, the first Somali refugees arrived in Finland. After that, due to their high total fertility rate and the high number of Somali family reunifications, quota refugees and asylum seekers, they rapidly became the largest African group in Finland. During the 2003 FIFA U-17 World Championship held in Finland, most of the Sierra Leone national under-17 football team's players defected to Finland due to their country's poor conditions after a civil war that had ended a year earlier.