Football (Soccer) Thread

[Duque de Bragança]

It seems I'm kind of rooting for BiH to win the play-off, although I shouldn't say this out loud for fear of being decapitated by my fellow countrymen.

BiH has a good team that wouldn't shame itself on the WC and I think it could be helpful on the construction of a national identity over there, a thing that they might need.

Portugal on the other side should go back to the drawing table after sacking Queirós and removing Ronaldo from the captain spot and giving it to someone who actually deserves for what he has done on the national team like Simão or Ricardo Carvalho.

/I_Killed_Kenny

Nigga please... Self-hatred is so Portuguese

/I_Killed_Kenny

[Valdemar]

Tordesillas treaty still applies after all  

Rather in reverse as it is.. brazil is taking over the Portuguese team, not the other wayaround

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[The Larch]

IIRC the rules are you can't play in two national teams, ever. If Almunia had played for Spain, then he would be barred from joining England's team. But he never did so it would be OK for England to have him. I don't think that would get a raised eyebrow in Spain. We have had players born in Argentina, Hungary... and even in today's team: Marcos Senna was born in Brazil, he's an Spanish citizen only since 2005.

Just look at the Portuguese team, they nationalised their third Brazilian only 10 days before their game in Copenhagen.

V

Tordesillas treaty still applies after all  

Funny thing, I was going to say that then we'd be happy to take as many Argenitinians as we could, but then I realized that basically besides Messi they'd have no place in the current Spanish national team. 

[The Larch]

He does have English nationality.
According to Wiki though the powers that be are opposed to him playing and insist he's Spanish.
That would be very very iffy behaviour if we did that. I'm not so sure I'd be comfortable with it. And if England did win...well it'd be a huge scandal and would likely lead to such mercenary behaviour becoming ever more widespread.
You could well imagine the ruler of Dubai taking a interest in football and granting UAE citizenship to a bunch of awesome 3rd world players in exchange for big sums.
International football should remain pure even if club football is very tainted.


African teams: IIRC Ghana (I think it was them...) are quite heavily tipped as a good nation to put money on to win. High odds but a great team. Apparently.

IIRC the rules are you can't play in two national teams, ever. If Almunia had played for Spain, then he would be barred from joining England's team. But he never did so it would be OK for England to have him. I don't think that would get a raised eyebrow in Spain. We have had players born in Argentina, Hungary... and even in today's team: Marcos Senna was born in Brazil, he's an Spanish citizen only since 2005.

Almunia hasn't played for any national Spanish team, not even for the under-something categories, so he shouldn't have any problems playing for England should he be called. Almost every 2nd tier and some 1st tier teams in the last Euro had at least a naturalized player, it's not that strange nowadays.

[Duque de Bragança]

Tordesillas treaty still applies after all  

Rather in reverse as it is.. brazil is taking over the Portuguese team, not the other wayaround

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Nani is Brazilian too? 

[Valdemar]

Almost every 2nd tier and some 1st tier teams in the last Euro had at least a naturalized player, it's not that strange nowadays.

Well yes, but there IS a difference in how and why some of them are nationalised...

Refugees, Immigrants, or children of Immigrants.. sure...

Players in high numbers, right before an important match, only just fullfilling the requirements? It can get borderline IMHO.

There were likewise issues in handball were at one point the entire Austrian Women's national team equalised 1 club team who where all nationlised East Europeans, mostly Hungarian, Bulgarien, Ukainian and so on.

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[Duque de Bragança]

Almost every 2nd tier and some 1st tier teams in the last Euro had at least a naturalized player, it's not that strange nowadays.

Well yes, but there IS a difference in how and why some of them are nationalised...

Refugees, Immigrants, or children of Immigrants.. sure...

Players in high numbers, right before an important match, only just fullfilling the requirements? It can get borderline IMHO.

There were likewise issues in handball were at one point the entire Austrian Women's national team equalised 1 club team who where all nationlised East Europeans, mostly Hungarian, Bulgarien, Ukainian and so on.

V

Guess what, Football players are immigrants too if highly paid. Brazilians always had it easy entering Portugal and vice versa. Besides, I'd rather have Liedson than whatever Pentecostal Protestant sect Brazil graces us with, not to mention the telenovelas

All of that makes one player fullfilling the naturalisation requirements (years of residence in Portugal, no jail time etc.) before the game in Copenhagen. Where are your players in high numbers?

[The Larch]

Almost every 2nd tier and some 1st tier teams in the last Euro had at least a naturalized player, it's not that strange nowadays.

Well yes, but there IS a difference in how and why some of them are nationalised...

Refugees, Immigrants, or children of Immigrants.. sure...

Players in high numbers, right before an important match, only just fullfilling the requirements? It can get borderline IMHO.

There were likewise issues in handball were at one point the entire Austrian Women's national team equalised 1 club team who where all nationlised East Europeans, mostly Hungarian, Bulgarien, Ukainian and so on.

V

Normally, the kind of player that gets naturalized to play for another nation's national team is a Brazilian who never got capped back home (either because they weren't good enough, because they weren't noticed or because they were passed over) and gets called up when he gets the nationality of the country where he's been playing for many years. You have Senna in Spain, Deco in Portugal, Eduardo in Croatia, Aurelio in Turkey or Guerreiro in Poland fitting that mold, and Almunia would be like them. And then there are the ones that have some kind of link with their "new" country, like Kuranyi in Germany, Trezeguet in France or Camoranesi in Italy. It's not something unprecedented at all.

[Valdemar]

I didn't say it was unprecedented, nor that anything was wrong with it. Only that once in a while it tends to get very obvious and as such moves into a grey area

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[The Larch]

I didn't say it was unprecedented, nor that anything was wrong with it. Only that once in a while it tends to get very obvious and as such moves into a grey area

V

Of course it's obvious, and I don't see much of a grey area. Those guys fulfill the requeriments for naturalization, and shouldn't be prevented from representing their new countries. Normally those guys have been living and playing on their new countries for a long time. The cases that deserve further scrutiny are the ones when normal rules are circumvented for speedier naturalizations, such as Solomon Kalou's botched attempt at getting Dutch nationality, I guess those are the ones you think of.

[Valdemar]

Nope the most blatant was as I mentioned the Austrian Handball team where at one point the national team didn't have a single player almost who had been born in Austria

Duque, I'm not sure i understand your question? What players from where?

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[The Larch]

Nope the most blatant was as I mentioned the Austrian Handball team where at one point the national team didn't have a single player almost who had been born in Austria

Duque, I'm not sure i understand your question? What players from where?

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Handball AFAIK has laxer naturalization rules, I remember Talant Duishebayev playing both for Russia and Spain with little problems involved. And we're talking footie here, anyway. 

[Josquius]

If other teams do then that makes them cheating scum and we should not drop to their level (I do remember that Turkish Brazilian...)

A trouble with England potentially doing it too I think is that there is no English citizenship, only British. Every England player has actual links to England. Even the Welsh, for all the stick they get for having nought but England rejects only take players with actual Welsh links.

[Grey Fox]

Montreal's Impact won the USL championship cup. I guess.

[Valdemar]

Handball AFAIK has laxer naturalization rules, I remember Talant Duishebayev playing both for Russia and Spain with little problems involved. And we're talking footie here, anyway. 

True tue, but since when has that stopped a languish discussion?

Still, nationalising him, then picking him for the national team btw. 2 games while the team is in session still seems to be almost defying the intention of the rules, even if by the letter he was eligible

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