Unwilling internationals

[delicatemoth]

I can hardly think of any footballers who were explicitly uninterested in playing international football. This strikes me as rather odd. Possible reasons for not wanting to include political opinions, dislike of manager/team-mates, having a terrible national anthem, desire for the summer off, wanting to prolong one's club career as much as possible, just not fancying all the travelling and pissing about.

That's quite a few potential reasons and I'd have thought there'd be a noticeable minority of refusers. But, aside from Bernd Schuster's early retirement, I can't think of any. Is this one of those things like the 'honours' system, where if they ask and the player refuses it's all kept quiet? Might this explain why some players are apparently inexplicably overlooked for international callups?

There must be someone apart from Schuster, surely. I know Scholes retired from it early compared to most, and he definitely gave the impression that it was just a pain in the arse as far as he was concerned. Any more?

[RobM]

Unwilling internationals

Duncan Ferguson withdrew from the Scotland set-up as a form of protest at sanctions handed down to him for him being a big nutter.

[Janik]

Unwilling internationals

Lianne Sanderson retired from internationals aged 21. She has unretired since the dismissal of the manager concerned.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Unwilling internationals

I have a vague memory of an English goalkeeper who ruled himself out of a tournament, because he didn't want to spend weeks abroad with only footballers for company.

[Geoffrey de Ste. Croix]

Unwilling internationals

Janik wrote: Lianne Sanderson retired from internationals aged 21. She has unretired since the dismissal of the manager concerned.

Similar to Mark van Bommel refusing to play for van Basten. Van Bommel returned once his father in law took over as national coach.

[Janik]

Unwilling internationals

Former Barcelona defender Oleguer never participated in mainstream international Football due his political stance. He play for Catalonia, though.

[Tapiocahead]

Unwilling internationals

The keeper may well be Ben Foster.

Steven Ireland and his numerous dead grannies must fit the bill.

[Borracho]

Unwilling internationals

Lilian Thuram retired from France duty in 2005 because the squad was full of arseholes.

The FFF then basically made him come back against his will. Not sure what they could have done if he'd told them to piss off though. Give him a jail sentence for crimes against patriotism?

[Janik]

Unwilling internationals

Geoffrey de Ste. Croix wrote:

Lianne Sanderson retired from internationals aged 21. She has unretired since the dismissal of the manager concerned.

Similar to Mark van Bommel refusing to play for van Basten. Van Bommel returned once his father in law took over as national coach.

Sanderson's absence was a little more principled than that, but I guess there are parallels.

[Mr Shadrak]

Unwilling internationals

Phil Parkes retired from the England squad in the late 70s having number three keeper behind Shilton and Clemence for most of the previous five years or so. Joe Corrigan then took over his place.

A French midfielder, Serge Chiesa of Lyon, refused to play for the national team again after a being picked a dozen or so times in the mid 70s. He was still playing well into the 80s and probably would have been in the 1978 World Cup squad at least.

[seand]

Unwilling internationals

Plenty of them around. Stephen Ireland, as mentioned, springs to mind. How many friendlies did Giggs play for Wales in a 20 year playing career? Kris Commons retired from Scotland duty at 29, charmingly claiming that he wanted to focus on family and club football- cos helping Celtic stay ahead of Hamilton Academicals must have been taking it's toll. Kevin Prince Boateng didn't fancy the travel with Ghana. Scholes, Totti, Ribery, Shearer all couldn't be arsed beyond the age of 30(ish).

[Borracho]

Unwilling internationals

Kris Commons retired from Scotland duty at 29, charmingly claiming that he wanted to focus on family and club football- cos helping Celtic stay ahead of Hamilton Academicals must have been taking it's toll.

It's public knowledge that Commons quit the Scotland set-up because Craig "4-6-0" Levein kept refusing to pick him during 2012 and 2013, even though he was in terrific form at the time and was starring in a Celtic team that made the last 16 of the Champions League. It would have been utterly pointless for him to stick around.

The reason for him not being picked was because Levein held a grudge against him after he asked to be excused from the meaningless, unnecessary Carling Nations Cup at the end of 2010-11, on the grounds of fatigue afer playing more than 50 games that season. And people wonder why Scotland's results were so bad under that fucking idiot.

[G-Man]

Unwilling internationals

Benni McCarthy retired dozens of times from South Africa's national team, citing different reasons every time. In the end the coaches just didn't bother with the guy.

Steve Bruce must have made himself unavailable. There is no other plausible explanation for why he never earned a cap.

[Reed John]

Unwilling internationals

Janik wrote: Former Barcelona defender Oleguer never participated in mainstream international Football due his political stance. He play for Catalonia, though.

I like the idea that there's a vibrant Alt-Int football scene, but I suspect it would fall apart as everyone squabbled over whose sub-national identity was more obscure.

[Janik]

Unwilling internationals

I'm not sure it would be called vibrant, but there are a few teams like Catalonia, Occitania, Sami, etc. that are reasonably established. There was a thread a few weeks ago about their current World Cup.

[Reed John]

Unwilling internationals

Thanks.

Does playing in this tournament make a player ineligible for FIFA competitions? I recall something about the penalties for playing in a "rogue" league. It seems like there'd be some countries that would make a big effort to put the kybosh on some of these teams, lest part of their country get too nationalist and uppity.

I would love to support a team that had more specific meaning to me than the United States, but in football, I'm not sure what that would be. Central Pennsylvania wouldn't be able to produce much of a team.

[ursus arctos]

Unwilling internationals

They aren't considered as such by FIFA or the federations.

Nor are the more established autonomous region teams in Spain, which regularly field international (though may play only one match a season).

[danielmak]

Unwilling internationals

Some of the players who played for Catalunya's various friendlies have also played for Spain if I remember correctly. So there wouldn't be a penalty.

[Tony C]

Unwilling internationals

Steve Bruce must have made himself unavailable. There is no other plausible explanation for why he never earned a cap.

He had dedicated himself to pursuing his writing career during the summer months.

[Borracho]

Unwilling internationals

Graham Taylor was England manager during Brucie's peak years.

[JM Footzee]

Unwilling internationals

Tapiocahead wrote: The keeper may well be Ben Foster.

Yeah, that rang a bell for me too. I thought he'd said that he didn't think travelling to all those matches as third choice was the greatest use of his time (put more politely than that). However the story I pulled up from 2011 just had him saying he needed opportunities to recover from niggling injuries.

He decided in 2013 this was no longer an issue and played in the 2014 World Cup, his last appearance for England. I don't think he's retired at the moment, and if that's the case I'm mildly surprised he isn't third-choice for England at the Euros behind Hart/Forster. He was injured for a fair bit of the season but was playing by the end of it and Heaton never seemed particularly remarkable to me.

[Sam]

Unwilling internationals

Carlos Tevez has never retired from international football, but often said during Alejandro Sabella's management of the team (when Tevez wasn't considered) that playing for Argentina was more hassle than it was worth. Mind you, Tevez has said more than once in interviews that he doesn't really enjoy playing football at all.

Juan Román Riquelme retired from international football in 2006 after his mum fell ill partly as a result of the criticism he took after the 2006 World Cup, came back in 2007 and then retired again in 2009 after an argument with Diego Maradona. In fairness, if more Argentina players had threatened to refuse to play under Diego fucking Maradona, Argentina might have done rather better in South Africa.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

Unwilling internationals

Ryan Giggs

[Belhaven]

Unwilling internationals

Henrik Larsson had a long break from the Swedish national team as he'd rather spend that time with his family. Apparently it was his son that had made him change his mind when he made himself available for the 2002 World Cup.

[Geoffrey de Ste. Croix]

Unwilling internationals

There’s also Alan Hansen whose reluctance to play for Scotland manifested itself in miraculous recoveries for Liverpool after calling off injured for the national team. Hansen has a paltry 26 caps despite a 14-year glittering career in the heart of Liverpool’s famed defence.

Hansen pissed Jock Stein off so much he stopped picking him. Alex Ferguson inherited Stein’s distrust and Ferguson’s decision not to take Hansen to Mexico in 1986 was one of the reasons Dalglish did not go and one source of the less than cordial relationship between Dalglish and Ferguson.