Comments on: Of Nationalities and National Teams

By: Melissa

Melissa — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 01:02:55 +0000

… and I’ll let Brooks & Carter handle the “other guy” discussions. Good luck to them regarding that hot tranny mess of a footie player.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:58:23 +0000

GS, I definitely follow your argument and do think some of this nationality stuff has gone a bit over the deep end (although, full disclosure, I actually have two passports). But looking at it from the angle of women’s soccer, there does appear to be a significant gap between player development in the US vs a lot of the rest of the world. So sometimes this is a country’s only way to be able to field a full, competitive team. Here’s a quote from that Global Game article above on women players in Portugal:

Portugal’s federation four years ago launched a cooperative arrangement with the United Soccer Leagues’ top women’s division, the W-League—founded by Francisco Marcos, born and raised in Portugal—to find foreign-born players of Portuguese descent. The tie-in allows Mónica Jorge, coach of the senior women’s team, to add numbers to a limited selection pool. “We’re told that only 1,300 females are registered in total to play soccer in Portugal,” says Canadian striker Alex Valerio, 18, called up in April to Portugal’s squad for two UEFA U-19 qualifiers. “Some youth clubs in Ottawa have more than that.”

So it does appear this sort of thing will continue and it’s not necessarily a bad thing under the circumstances. As for the men’s side…

By: Marlon

Marlon — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:46:48 +0000

http://www.soccerbyives.net/soccer_by_ives/2008/11/gulati-says-sub.html

By: Marlon

Marlon — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:15:01 +0000

I’m hearing the Subotic story is a rumor started by a Serbian newspaper.

By: GS

GS — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:12:45 +0000

There is a lot of gray area when it comes to nationalities but if you were born in a country and have lived your entire life there before being “recruited” by countries where your parents or grandparents may have lived for a few years…there is absolutely no way you should be able to play for another country. That is absolutely ludicrous. Almost as bad is players who were born here and lived most of their lives here before they decided to develop their skills over seas, ala Rossi. I can’t believe that this hasn’t been ruled upon yet. On the same note, it is ridiculous that you can hold duel citizenship’s. If you become a citizen of another country you should lose your citizenship from the country you came from. Why should you be allowed to be a citizen of multiple countries?? It’s only going to get worse if they don’t do something about it.