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Otta

By Otta
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StraferJack

StraferJack

Posted
Posted

national teams - who should play for them?


this is pretty much how I feel (from Arseblog):




Wilshere has been talking about internationals and how national sides should only choose players from that particular country:


The only people who should play for England are English people. If you live in England for five years it doesn?t make you English. If I went to Spain and lived there for five years I am not going to play for Spain.

Yes, but if you?ve got parents who come from a different country and you?re born in England then you have something of a choice to make. Or if you?ve lived in England from a young age. Or if you?ve got English parents and you?re born abroad. Or if you fake your own death in one country and buy an English passport from a dodgy site on the deep web and assume the identity of an Englishman and turn out to be good at football and Roy Hodgson needs you.


It?s complicated, in fairness. As an Irishman, I can talk about how we revolutionised international football in the Jack Charlton era. Of course there were many players of Irish descent in the UK. Emigration from this country was a fact of life, and I myself, personally, was born in London to Irish parents and could have been forced with that most difficult of choices had I not been a) more interested in beer and girls as a teenager and b) not quite as good as Alan Kernaghan.


Yet we, and by we I mean Charlton, took it to extraordinary levels. Players who had Irish parents were one thing, but we had the grandparent thing going on. Then possibly the great-grandparent. Then it was anyone who might once have read Flann O?Brien, enjoyed the stylings of Gilbert O?Sullivan or listened to Terry Wogan in the morning. In fact, it went so far that Tony Cascarino?s Irish ?qualifications? were entirely fictionalised (I think it was Samuel Beckett?s last contribution to Irish life), and the toothless would-be striker admitted to it in his autobiography (in which he probably also talked about wanking and other dressing room japes).


Did it really matter to anyone? Not at all. These men were embraced, they were green to the core, although it probably helped that the nation enjoyed its most successful spell at international level under Charlton. Ok, so the football was horrendous, but it didn?t really make that much difference when you were playing Italy in the quarter-finals of the World Cup and everyone single person in the country was out on the piss. Even the pioneers.


Anyway, my point is, who really cares? The world is hardly defined by boundaries any more. We?re a jumble of races, creeds and colours in almost every country, and international football is just a gigantic scam to ensure that FIFA remains rich and can host decadent parties at which corpulent, piggish executives can quaff wine and gobble expensive food served on the backs of orphans whose parents have died building stadiums in the desert because an oil rich nation has bought the rights to host the World Cup when there?s simply no good reason to hold the tournament there in the slightest.


Other than to make the rich people richer, of course.


Which is exactly what will happen because the players and the fans, the ones who actually make football what it is, are just an afterthought. They?re way down the list after sponsors, corporate shills, advertisers, TV companies, sports gear manufacturers, event managers, and assorted hangers-on to all of those people.


I mean, I get where Jack is coming from to an extent, but international football isn?t really about representing your country any more. There?s no core of morality to the game at this level. You can pick a racist over the brother of the man the racist abused and people will accept that because they think it gives them a better chance of winning. So let?s not jump on any high horses about nationality, especially as England have exploited the ?rules?, such as they are, down the years.

El Pibe

El Pibe

Posted
Posted

So JW is basically saying Mo Farah shouldn't have represented Britain then?


I'm not that fussed I guess but I do want it to mean something for someone to represent their country in a shirt.


If international football just becomes mercenarised a la the rest of football then I'll care even less than I already do.


I never really believed the shirt rather than the participation mattered for Zola Budd for instance, but for Mo it clearly did. It's a pretty loose test but it's the only one I've got.


I still think Di Canio should have played for England!!!!

DaveR

DaveR

Posted
Posted

I thought the most interesting part of the JW quotes was this:


"We have to remember what we are.


We are English. We tackle hard, are tough on the pitch and are hard to beat.


"We have great characters. You think of Spain and you think technical but you think of England and you think they are brave and they tackle hard. We have to remember that."


Are we doomed to have a national team that conform to this stereotype? I suspect we probably are, and that most established national teams, and individual players, have a strong sense of their own national footballing character that is hard to resist, even when as a player it's not your character.

Parkdrive

Parkdrive

Posted
Posted

Thanks to Patrick Barclay for this in the Evening Standard recently. Fancy that, a footballer daring to say what he actually thinks. Where will this scandalous behaviour end?


Thanks, Jack Wilshere, for being so refreshing



Published: 10 October 2013 Updated: 15:29, 10 October 2013

Kevin Pietersen, like so many people these days, is over-obsessed with rules, guidance and definition. ?How do you define foreigner?? he asks Jack Wilshere, tendering a list of names of sportsmen that is headed, all too predictably, by his own.


Wilshere, with the politeness he has shown throughout the debate he started by saying that only English people should play for England, replies that his interest lies only in football. Once more he speaks for many of us. Cricket and other sports can do what they like.


My own view, as one of the millions who concentrate on football, is that nationality matters more than ever in a game that has put everything else up for sale, especially club allegiance, and that the noises emanating from Greg Dyke as FA chairman are therefore disturbing.


Dyke has called Wilshere?s views ?too extreme? and such has been the volume of similarly mealy mouthed reaction that the Arsenal and England midfielder feels obliged to claim that they do not specifically apply to Adnan Januzaj, the Manchester United teenager who scored two exquisite goals on Saturday.



No wonder footballers are scared to express themselves. All Wilshere did was neatly, to borrow Pietersen?s phrase, ?define foreigner?? Without using the words, he defined foreigner as ?Adnan Januzaj?, or ?a chap born in Belgium of Albanian-Kosovar parentage who came here at 16?.


That, for the moment, is all we need to know. Sooner or later the FA will come up with a batch of rules, guidance and definition of their own and this will confuse matters, much as their worthy attempt to legislate for post-match justice over the Torres/Vertonghen farce.


But for now, thanks to the refreshing candour of Wilshere?s initial briefing, we have a stance that in all of our hearts we understand, whether we are English ? I?m British myself, or European ? or not.

Jah Lush

Jah Lush

Posted
Posted

???? Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Agree absolutely, but we,ve seen debuts as dynamic

> (nearly) but then they fizzle out, I think another

> Spurs player, Lennon would be a good example. I

> think his England debut was hugely impressive?



Anyone remember Alan Hudson? Tore the world champions West Germany apart in a two-nil win on his debut. Played in the following game - a five-nil defeat of Cyprus and then never played for England again. Disgraceful really as he was a hugely talented player.


I'm not going to get carried away with Townsend's debut as impressive as it was. He's still young and got a lot to learn.


And PD - would you have agreed with Wiltshire's comment if he'd been a Spurs player or say John Terry had spouted the same thing? I'm not so sure you would. As for Januzaj himself he's played a handful of games for Man Utd so let's not get carried away and he's got five years to wait before he is elegible to play for England. I'm sure he'll choose to play for someone else before then.

maxxi

maxxi

Posted
Posted

V good debut - the kind one looks for from y. players - time to get rid of the last of the old (Lampard, and er... Lampard... tbh not really impressed with Carrick either) and the 'tried but failed' (Walker)


Expect Engand to qualify (as they did for S Arica) then fail miserably (as they did...etc) as the usual timidity, lack of confidence, and conservatively unadventurous approach to the beautiful game returns.

Parkdrive

Parkdrive

Posted
Posted

Jah Lush Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I was wondering when you'd bite PD. *packs up rod

> and puts bait back in tin and heads home*


Just like all the other Tottnum fans on the social networks, they all went walkabout when they got ripped a new one by West Ham and when a guy that has had ONE game for his country and scores ONE goal they all come slithering out of the woodwork. Best place for you Jah is the bait tin with the rest of the maggots. 61 never again, ?110 million 6th place, Tottnum and its fans are the gift that keeps on giving. Try and again mate and lets see what other gems you come up with. Bite on that.

Parkdrive

Parkdrive

Posted
Posted
Has that Ladbrokes Townsend, Andys son, scored a hat trick for his country, no? The way Tottnum fans are piping up you'd think he was as good as Ronaldo or Messi, but we've come to expect delusional behaviour from Sperz fand. Lets see how he does in the Prem against decent opposition and not some lack lustre international cannon fodder that most Championship sides would tunover.

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