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anonamoose

Interesting Internationals

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Something that has been on my mind. It seems that many of the home nations are getting players called up to their squad who have Irish grandparents or a Scottish Dad and son on. I am English and our national team is made of people who live here primarily.Is there any home nations out there who have an opinion about this? I''m not sure I would want an Irish guy, who speaks Irish and has lived there all his life playing in the England national team. It seems to be happening a lot recently. Its a great thing for a player to get a call up but sometimes I wonder if that would be their first choice international team to play for. Maybe its a flaw in the system

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Only a very small percentage of Irish people speak Gaelic, so I suppose you are meaning an Irish accent. Anyhow, I''m nitpicking.

 

Re: your main point. I see what you mean, but selecting these "semi-foreigners" a bit more might bring us more success. It is not against the rules these days.

 

Jackie Charlton, whe manager of the Irish team, stretched it to the limits and was  probably their most successful manager, still loved.  Players only had to be seen drinking a pint of Guinness to be in the Irish team.

 

The English cricket selectors have been experts at this from the days of Tony Greig and Basil D''Oliveira to the present with Trott and Morgan etc.

 

Our last two managers have been foreigners too.

 

Overall, no problem for me.

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[quote user="Bethnal Yellow and Green"]Owen Hargreaves?[/quote]

 

Yes. His name reflects his background. His mother being Welsh christened him Owen, whilst his English father had a good old traditional Northern surname.

 

Yet he was born in Canada so he was eligible to pick Wales, England or Canada. He chose England, which would have been good for us had he not succumbed to injury so soon into his international career.

 

I don''t recall anybody objecting to his selection.

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Can anyone remember a few years back with Manuel Almunia? At the time England were struggling to field a decent keeper and this guy was no.1 for Arsenal. I seem to recall most people were buzzing for Almunia to stick on an england shirt. His whole family (inc himself) is spannish and he would have only qualified because he''d lived here for a decade.

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5 Years isn''t it Hoolahans Ped?

I though Cudichini was the first one mentioned for the England GK spot, and then Almuina. And recently Arteta was suggested (not to play in goal obviously).

There isn''t really a problem, although to be honest you have to question why players want to play for another nation? If you had one parent English and Scottish, or English parents but lived in Bulgaria all your life you could justify playing for Bulgaria, but in someone like Tierney''s case, isn''t it a grand parent? If its only one Grant parent, then that makes him only a quarter Irish, he''s probably never lived there etc etc. So why would Tierney want to play for Ireland?

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It gives a lot of players the opportunity to play international footy, when they would not have a chance otherwise. On a personal note, I was once a fairly good runner, gaining a few England/GB vests but only when those better than me were unavailable. After this time I found out that my Grandfather was born in Wales, if I''d known it at the time, I could have made a Commonwealth games team !  

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May have misheard but I thought they said on the radio that Jordan Rhodes only qualifies for Scotland because he went to school there for 5 years.

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I don''t really care - I think if you''ve lived here for a certain amount of time, then you''re probably going to have "adopted" the country. In some ways, a total foreigner with no family links to England who has lived here for 10 years is probably going to feel more "English" than someone who has got an English grandma but has lived all their life abroad.

But either way, I think that as long as they''re committed to the country (both in footballing terms and sort of national pride so to speak), then I''ve got no problem with them playing for us.

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[quote user="Hoolahans Ped"]Can anyone remember a few years back with Manuel Almunia? At the time England were struggling to field a decent keeper and this guy was no.1 for Arsenal. I seem to recall most people were buzzing for Almunia to stick on an england shirt. His whole family (inc himself) is spannish and he would have only qualified because he''d lived here for a decade. [/quote]There is an agreement between England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales that players born outside of the UK will not be nationalised in this fashion. This could open all kinds of problems. Almunia could have applied for nationality, which would have given him a GB Passport - which would technically mean he could play for any of the 4 Home Nations. Of course if this started happening UEFA and FIFA would argue that there should be a GB team to remove any confusion. Scotland want to nationalise Shola Ameobi but were blocked under the same agreement.

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Its all over the world, with all sorts of sports

Have a look at the New Zealand rugby union world cup winners. Some of their players are Polynesian

They are the rules, and if people are comfortable with playing for ''their'' country then so be it.

Personally, I am/''feel'' English, both my parents are/were English, but I wouldn''t feel right if, say I had a non English born grandparent, and this qualified me to play tiddlywinks for Uzbekistan for example

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