Another footie question

What is the FIFA rule on who belongs to which country regards national sides? Is a player, once he’s capped, at any level, bound to that country forever? Or is it only if they are capped at the full men’s team?

Example 1: Freddy Adu has played for the USA U-14, U-17 and now U-20 teams. He is Ghanian by birth, but moved to the USA at age 7. He’s now 15, IIRC, and could concievable move to the Premiership (or some other European league) before he’s 18 years old. Let’s say he plays for Man Utd for a couple of years and enjoys the fame in England, vs relative anonymity in the USA. Is he eligible still to play for Ghana or England?

Example 2: Jemal Johnson plays for Blackburn and has come up through their youth sides. He’s American born and raised before he decided to move to England and try to earn his keep, eschewing the MLS or US collegiate soccer. AFAIK he’s never played for the US youth squads. So I assume that he could, if chosen, decide to play for England. (He’s hella fast, but I haven’t seen any indication that he could win a spot on the full English squad anytime soon, but this is just a theoretical case).

Example 3: Giusseppe Rossi (sp?) is an American born young man of Italian parents. When he turned 12 years old his parents moved him back to Italy so that he could play football there. Apparently his father is insistent on him playing for Italia. I think that he’s plays for Italy on the U-19s. He’s currently 16 and plays for Man Utd (reserves?). Can he, at 18, decide he wants to be his own person and come back to play for the USA (or England)?

Jonathan Spector, who sees some playing time with ManUtd is in a similar situation to Jemal Johnson, example 2. Again, I don’t believe he’s ever played for a US national side.

My understanding is that FIFA has recently ruled that you have to have some previous connection, like parents/grandparents or living for more than 2 years in a country before they’ll let you play for a national team. This was as a result of a bunch of Brazilians deciding to play for Togo (I assume they couldn’t crack the Brazilian national side).

Here’s how I understand, for what it’s worth.

The full FIFA statue is here, p. 31 of the PDF. The quickie version is that up to age 21, you are only truly cap-tied by virtue of playing for the full national team; you can apply to change national associations otherwise, but only once. You also must qualify to play for the new association by virtue of dual nationality or somesuch. After age 21, you are cap-tied by having played for the national team at any level.

For Ghana, yes. For England, he would have to become a British citizen first, at least.

Again, he would have to become a British citizen first, if he hasn’t already.

For USA, certainly. For England, that whole citizen thing again.

Same reply. Spector has played for at least the USA U17 national team, though.

I don’t know how recent it’s been, but generally you have to be a citizen of the country/able to get a passport from said country. It just so happens that having parents or grandparents from a country often greatly helps in gaining citizenship to a country. Perhaps what you saw as a recent ruling was a limitation on how far countries can push that, i.e. no “Your great great grandfather had a cousin twice removed from our country! Come play for us!” I am pretty much completely sure the requirement is still more than just living in the country a couple of years.

It is a requirement to hold a passport in the country you play for. Any other way of determining “nationality” would just be too messy for FIFA.

When it comes to the various national teams of the UK it’s a bit more confusing. It’s my understanding, and hopefully one of the Brits can clear this up, is that FIFA is perfectly willing to recognise anyone holding a British passport as eligible to play for any of the home countries, but there is some kind of internal agreement that the home countries themselves will only accept players with a birth or parental tie to that country. Is that correct?

Here’s the BBC article I was using as reference (not as good as FIFA statutes, but suggests how they are followed):

It seems the intent is to keep countries from conferring “instant citizenship” to help their side’s chances. So one could have a passport for a country and still be denied to play for them.

Ah, I see. The residency requirement is in addition to the citizenship requirement. That makes sense. I’m not sure how much this will burb abuses or just make sure the abuses are committed two years ahead of time, though.

Eligibility of players is always a sticky subject. I did find this extract though:

From this site, England Football Online - Appendices - U.K. Agreement Regarding the Eligibility of International Players

I assume this is still relevant although the site is a little out of date.

I remember the rather unedifying scramble to try to secure the services of Owen Hargreaves a few years ago. As far as I can remember Wales, England, Canada and Germany were all in the hunt.

Where was Hargreaves from?

Canada.

So, may I presume he wasn’t playing for the Canadian side because he’d spent quite a bit of time playing in European leagues as a professional? Or was he just doing anything he could to avoid playing for the Canadian nationals because they’re not very good?

On the subject of British teams, one urban myth that needs debinking is that Ryan Giggs could have played for England: He couldn’t. (However, the rules have recently been changed to allow eg. Welsh residents of England to play for England etc.)

THis is one of those things that make your ears bleed.

To play for England Scotland or Wales you have to have at least a parental connection.

If you come from the channel Islands you can play for england Sccotland, Wales or N Ireland or France

If you come from N Ireland you can choose to play for ROI (I think you can get an Irish passport too - but I’m buggered if I’m sure about this).

If you come from ROI you can’t play for NI unless you have the family connection

If you are English and have ever watched an episode of Father Ted you can play for Ireland (at least that’s how it seems - Gary Doherty is from County Luton (and looks like Beaker from the Muppets)

At a junior level you play for the country you live in - this is why Ryan Giggs played for England schoolboys - he was a schoolboy in England, but he was never eligible to play for the full England team (unfortunately).

Damn your nationalism. Just go ahead and join forces with all the above. It’d give you a hell of a boost in international competition and be rid of some of the whining that goes on. A UK side could be the new Brazil, which would be fitting given the sport’s origins.

:wink:

He was born in Calgary and had a Welsh mother and an English father. He left to play in Germany at 16 after a scout noticed him.

It will never happen. Politics will out. Even if it did the UK team would be the English side + possibly Ryan Giggs.

There’s not another Scot, Irish or Welsh out there that could be of help?

You’re a professional footballer. You have a choice to play either for:

A) a European team that qualifies for nearly every international tournament, has actually won some of them, and in general is regarded as pretty good, or

B) Canada.

What do you reckon? :smiley:

Yes, as I posted earlier, you have to have a passport from a country to play for that country. Everyone born on this island is entitled to an Irish passport (for the moment anyway, but that’s a subject for another thread).

Entitlement to a passport != possession of a passport != entitlement to play international football under Fifa regulations.

All the entitlement to or possession of a passport demonstrates is that a country is willing to give you that document. It would be perfectly possible to be entitled to a passport from a particular country, but not qualify to play football for them. It would also be possible to play an international match without ever owning a passport.

Nobody said otherwise.

I can’t find the cite I saw some time ago which said that FIFA actually requires you hold a passport, so I’ll amend my previous comment to say you have to hold citizenship (which de facto means you are eligible for a passport).

Fair enough, it may well be the case that this is the standard Fifa policy - but hopefully it’s also a flexible one, to prevent silly scenarios of people not being able to play just because they don’t hold the right documents.

However, the whole England/Wales/etc. situation shows that the rules cannot simply be described in terms of passports or nationality - because it’s not possible to have Welsh nationality, or an English passport.

Well, as I said, I was talking specifically about FIFA’s requirements. And we seem to have already established that FIFA doesn’t care which of the home countries a player comes from, it’s the domestic football associations that make that call. But as far as FIFA regulations go, the rules can be described in terms of nationality- it just has to be British nationality if you want to play for any of these countries.