Senna, then

[ursus arctos]

Senna, then

I agree that any blanket attempt to ban naturalised players is almost certain to result in a very quick tumble down a very slippery slope.

At the same time, I understand where Hieronymous is coming from with his criticism of the Roger situation, which can only be described as farcical.

That leads me to advocate a position in which naturalised citizens who have not played at senior level for their home country are fully able to represent their new country, but no "fast track" naturalisation procedures are allowed solely on the basis of athletic prowess.

Which is pretty much exactly what erwin said.

As an aside to whoever mentioned the Serie A passport scandal, that had nothing whatsoever to do with national team qualifications and everything to do with limitations on the number of non-EU players allowed in any Serie A squad. Those restrictions are obviously a very worthy subject of discussion, but I don't think that it is useful to conflate the two.

[AMMS]

Senna, then

Hieronymus of Hesselink wrote:

EIM wrote:

Am I right in saying that Manchester United had a fee agreed with Villareal for Senna, and a contract all ready to be finalised before pulling it at the last minute?

Two years ago.

As an aside, I am getting a bit sick of European national teams each having their own pet Brazilian who gets to wear the jersey after three or four years (or frequently less) of living in the country. Senna should be playing for Brazil, not Spain.

Actually I've been sick of a certain European country taking players from other European countries for a while now. Wanna guess which one I mean??

[beak]

Senna, then

An England with Kilbane, Cascarino, Morrison, Townsend, Aldridge, McCarthy...

We can but dream.

[Gambrinus]

Senna, then

Three year residency rule, like rugby.

Actually no, this could possibly fuck Wales up. Leave everything as it is.

[Anton Gramscescu]

Senna, then

What is the precise FIFA rule on naturalization now? Two years, isn't it? With some discussion of putting it up to five?

[colinwasp]

Senna, then

Can someone clarify for me whether Maik Taylor has Northern Irish ancestry or, as a British citizen born on an overseas Army Base, whether he could choose any of the four Home Nations?

[Jimmy Bignutz]

Senna, then

Pretty sure it's the latter.

[ursus arctos]

Senna, then

Two years or parental/grandparental qualification.

And yes, there has been some discussion of extending it to five. My sense is that the impetus for more stringent rules is primarily coming from non-Emirate AFC members, who are particularly concerned about what Qatar has already done in athletics and is trying to do in football.

[anton pulisov]

Senna, then

Marcos Senna has more of a personal connection with Spain than Aiden McGeady does with Ireland, that's for sure.

[blameless]

Senna, then

I'm all for tightening up the eligibility rules for players, just so long as we can extend it to fans too and ban Rod Stewart from supporting Scotland.

[Guest]

Senna, then

AMMS wrote:

Actually I've been sick of a certain European country taking players from other European countries for a while now. Wanna guess which one I mean??

McGeady's four grandparents are Irish and emigrated to Scotland from Co Donegal in the 1950s, making him genetically Irish to the tips of his little twinkle toes. He's in the same bracket as Ray Houghton, Tommy Coyne and Charlie Gallagher.

If it's any consolation, his form for Ireland so far has lagged miles behind his displays for Celtic, and Scotland seem to be doing well enough without him.

If Roger Guerreiro's grandparents had emigrated to Brazil from Warsaw in the 1950s, I would have no problem whatsoever with him playing for Poland.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Senna, then

Why stop at grandparents? Why not great-grandparents, or a sixteenth century ancestor. Where and why precisely does the blood-line grow so thin it's no longer relevant?

[Ray de Galles]

Senna, then

Hieronymus of Hesselink wrote:

Poland's Roger Guerreiro fiasco, where the guy had a fresh passport hurled at him a few weeks before the finals began, was merely the latest example of this shite. Guerreiro will probably join a non-Polish club side within the next two years and see his international career die a swift death, just like Emmanuel Olisadebe (debut for Poland 2000, departure from Polish club football 2001, international career effectively dead after 2002 World Cup at the age of 23).

I was wondering about Olisabede this tournament. Surely his dissapearance from the Polish national side is more due to his decline as a player as it is him no longer playing club football in Poland?

[Guest]

Senna, then

A de C, I agree that this is a hard one to quantify to everyone's satisfaction. I still think the current situation is farcical in the extreme. We are getting to the stage where probably half the teams at Euro 2012 will have a Brazilian playing for them.

Maybe we should start doing it too. Get hold of a good Brazilian player, let the Irish government buy his registration off his club, give him an Irish passport and a big mansion in the heart of leafy Dublin 4, sell him to a Premiership team like Arsenal, let him fly over to England each morning for training sessions and at the weekends for the games before jetting back into Dublin to get around the residency rules, stick him in the Rep of Ireland team, everyone's a winner baby.

Just been doing a quick bit of reading about the whole Qatar/imported athletes thing. Jesus, I didn't realise the scale of it. It's huge. Most of them have been forced to change their names to Arabic ones. One Kenyan steeplechaser got $1 million from the Qatari athletics federation to change nationality. Seven Bulgarian weightlifters were also snapped up by them for another million bucks.

[AMMS]

Senna, then

I thought it was only one grandparent in McGeadys case but I don’t know why I think that. And his poor form is some consolation yes.

I didn’t necessarily mean McGeady especially but all the countless players that have played for the ROI in the last 20 years with the most tenuous of links to the country. You can’t tell me that Cascarino or Townsend felt more for Ireland than Senna does for Spain? At least he’s made his home there, and become a citizen, as has the Brazilian playing for Turkey I believe. I don’t disagree with you that it does seem a bit off especially if the player promptly leaves when they get the passport but surely living, working and choosing to become a citizen of a country is better than having a long lost relative? I know it’s not just the Republic of Ireland that has done this but they are the best known exponents of it though.

[Etienne]

Senna, then

I'd ban the grandparents rule too. Reluctantly, I'd allow parents though.

Basically, I think international football is/should be a test of each nations football culture, so I don't give a fuck where they were born or what their genetic upbringing is, did they learn to play football in the country? if they did, they should be eligible, if they didn't then they shouldn't.

I realise that there are legal difficulties with combinging that and liberal immigration and naturalisation policies (which I also support), but that's how it should be.

AG, do you support the Qatari idea? Should FIFA have let them have Ailton?

[Amor de Cosmos]

Senna, then

I think international football is/should be a test of each nations football culture, so I don't give a fuck where they were born or what their genetic upbringing is, did they learn to play football in the country? if they did, they should be eligible, if they didn't then they shouldn't.

Should Hargreaves, for instance, be able to play for England then? Based on your criteria his parentage says yes, but you can't possibly make a case that he learned to play football there.

[Ray de Galles]

Senna, then

Etienne wrote:

Basically, I think international football is/should be a test of each nations football culture, so I don't give a fuck where they were born or what their genetic upbringing is, did they learn to play football in the country? if they did, they should be eligible, if they didn't then they shouldn't.

You're Welsh aren't you? Our national team would be near finished under that principle.

edit: realises appalling back pass too late and sees striker nip in and poke it past keeper.

[delicatemoth]

Senna, then

Etienne, that's a very interesting definition of international football. I'd like to agree with you, but I don't know how it could work in practice.

If we stick with the definition of international sport as 'war minus the shooting' then those who qualify through relatives, or genuine affinity, have to be allowed (would you want to tell Perrotta he has to play for England because he happens to have been born there?). The problem with the grandparent rule is that it can't distinguish between someone who can genuinely identify as Irish (McGeady?) and someone who can't (Townsend? Lawrenson?).

Maybe it would be possible for FIFA or UEFA to rule that fast-track naturalisation would not make someone eligible to qualify for a national team, but there could be legal difficulties with that.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Senna, then

It's FIFA's job for sure. They ought to be able to set their own criteria as to what "footballing citizenship" means that are separate from an individual nation's. After all, no international restraint of trade is involved. Theoretically no one makes their living playing for a national football team, so I'd have thought it would be a relatively easy thing to accomplish.

Dream on, AdC...dream on.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Senna, then

So Hargreaves playing for England is completely acceptable.

Ooh, I dunno. He looks suspiciously swarthy to me. Black curly hair? Nah, right out.

[ursus arctos]

Senna, then

Were Cascarino et al not even Irish citizens?

I had always thought that they got Irish passports before turning out for the Republic.

[Ray de Galles]

Senna, then

From wiki;

Cascarino was born in England but represented the Republic of Ireland, qualifying through his Irish grandfather. However, he later revealed that his mother told him in 1996 that she was adopted and therefore no blood relative to the grandfather. Cascarino said in his autobiography: "I didn't qualify for Ireland. I was a fraud. A fake Irishman". However, through the adoption his mother gained the right to Irish citizenship and therefore he was indeed eligible."

[Anton Gramscescu]

Senna, then

AG, do you support the Qatari idea? Should FIFA have let them have Ailton?

In principle no, but I think they probably have to let them have Ailton because they snapped him up before the new rule came into place.

But I think the FIFA rule that was brought in to respond to the Ailton situation was broadly the right one - you can play for an adopted nationality provided you actually have citizenship AND residency there. Two or three years seems fine to me. That indicates some knowledge of and connection to the territory.

But I am generally reflexively against authorities telling me what my identity should be. This is a great po-mo world: we can, to a large extent, choose our own identities. It's one of the main reasons I prefer club football to international football.

This is a tangent, but I actually think that there are people around the world that view affiliation with a BRC as form of identity at least as much as they do support of a national team. And while there were lots of good reasons to oppose Game 39, what I think a lot of opponents missed is that there really are millions of people around the world who feel quite passionately about English clubs as the focus of this identity (far more so in many cases that they do about their own country's club or national teams) and it might be worthwhile to acknowledge that occasionally. I realise many here would dispute whether or not these people are "fans" or "supporters" or whatever - but identity and football is a very complex transnational phenomenon. Attempts to make players and allegiances more uni-dimensional just strike me as a horribly nineteenth century response to a twenty-first century problem.

[Guest]

Senna, then

ursus arctos wrote:

Were Cascarino et al not even Irish citizens?

I had always thought that they got Irish passports before turning out for the Republic.

Under our constitution, if you are born to a citizen of the country (a citizen is defined as anyone either born in Ireland or a child of a person born in Ireland) then you are an Irish citizen.

Regardless of where you were born, if you have an Irish-born grandparent then you can apply for "foreign-born registration" status, then Irish citizenship, and finally an Irish passport.

I have no idea how many of the Irish squad at, say, Italia 90, actually possessed Irish passports. Maybe they all did. Maybe only two-thirds of them did.