English players Dual Nationality thread

The only way I can see Turkey getting him is if all of a sudden he starts being ignored by England but don't see that happening anytime soon

 

Tottenham U18 goalkeeper Brandon Austin is currently with the USA U18s at a tournament in Slovakia. Born and raised in Hemel Hempstead; eligible for the USA through his father.
Spurs profile: http://www.tottenhamhotspur.com/second-year-academy/brandon-austin/
US Soccer profile: https://www.ussoccer.com/players/2017/04/19/15/45/brandon-austin#tab-1

Delighted to have been selected for the U18 USMNT! 🇺🇸⚽️💪🏾 https://t.co/mFspVuDay6

— Brandon Austin (@baustin__) April 20, 2017

 

Austin (upper left) got his first USA cap today in a win over hosts Slovakia. The senior USMNT keeper pool is not very good -- aging Tim Howard, aging Brad Guzan -- so Austin is a very welcome addition to the USA.

 

Since he's been mentioned on and off throughout the years in the offchance a) he was eligible and b) England cared, Jeremie Boga has declared his allegiances towards the Ivory Coast now.

 

Should also add that Ghana are trying to get Appiah at Forest.

Even in Ghana news stories about his first u23 start.

 

They'll send the Ghana FA President soon...or try to get him to commit through hassling his family, as they tried with Welbeck.

 

Speaking of Ghana, see on this article that they too are following the Nigerians by claiming every single player with heritage! In case they hadn't noticed and the last time I checked, both Ugbo & Hudson-Odoi are committed to England.

http://mobile.ghanasoccernet.com/gh...n-odoi-helps-chelsea-win-english-fa-youth-cup

 

I can't stand that phrase "English-born Ghanaian". Call him Ghanaian by all means if you want to talk up his parentage, but he's also English, not some human exclave of Ghana who just happens to have been born here. He's as much a part of England as any of us.

 

Actually you are looking in the wrong place. The home nations agreement is a sub-clause under article 6 and that isn't the one you want for a player such as Quina. He would have to meet the requirements under article 7 (Acquisition of a new nationality). And as neither he nor his parents or grand parents are born in England he would need qualify under clause "d" which reads;

It reads like that because FIFA regulations doesn't (normally) allow for transfers of U-18 players and the only reason it is allowed within the EU is that EU law would never uphold such a rule if it stopped an EU citizen from moving within the EU.

I'm not sure if FIFA would allow years before 18 to count for a player that moved legally before he turned 18 but even if they did I'm sure they would still require the full 5 years, and as you noted the player cannot have played official matches at any level if he wants to switch. So Quina (just as Arteta and loads more) will never be eligible for England. Boga has the years but he might have gotten a few youth caps along the way that takes him out of the running too.

Both the British media and FA staff have proven themselves to be completely unable to understand the eligibility requirements. There have been loads more than the mentioned Arteta and N'zonzi suggested over the years that wouldn't have been eligible either. But the media gets away with it as the average fan has even less of a clue and thus doesn't realise these potential additions isn't possible.

 

I think you are confused about what the "home nations agreement" does and intends to do. Using parents or grandparents birth place to gain eligibility is considered to be completely OK, it is in fact, if anything, seen as more OK than using residency to be eligible (which is what the "home nations agreement" clause does).

That said, yes scrapping the agreement would likely benefit England more than the other home nations as it is a lot more likely that Welsh, Scottish or NI footballers move to England (and thus gain an eligibility that they otherwise wouldn't have) that the other way around.

That is unclear. The statutes states that if an agreement is made then it has to be submitted to, and approved by, the ExCo. They do not however specify how one might end such an agreement. Presumably it would be enough for one FA to say that they no longer agree which would mean that there was no longer any agreement for the ExCo to approve of but it is possible that they could be a bit more strict about it and require there to be a majority in favour of scrapping it (it is FIFA we're talking about after all ). Bottom line is that we really don't know until someone challenges it.

 

That's actually what I said in the second paragraph here. However, having re-read the statutes with slightly less sleepy eyes and brain, I actually think that both you and I have got some of the detail wrong.

Both RGAS 6(1)(d) and the Home Nations Agreement (which replaces 6(1)(d)) apply to players "holding a permanent nationality that is not dependent on residence", as per RGAS 5(1). If Quina acquired British citizenship through residence, then the provisions for acquisition of a new nationality in RGAS 7 come into play, as you say. However, there are a number of ways that a child of foreign-born parents can acquire British citizenship that are not dependent on his own residence in the UK. Here are some:
-A parent who is an EEA national with "indefinite leave to remain" in the UK can register their child as a British citizen, irrespective of how long the child has been here.
-A parent who is an EEA national and has been legally living/working in the UK for 5 years (under treaty rights of free movement) can register their child as a British citizen, irrespective of how long the child has been here.
-A parent who acquires British citizenship through naturalisation - which usually (but not always) requires the parent to have lived legally in the UK for a period of time - can register their child as a British citizen, irrespective of how long the child has been here.

Presumably it's one of these routes that has allowed, for example, the Chalobah brothers to qualify for England, despite being born in Sierra Leone with foreign-born parents and grandparents and without having lived in the UK for 5 years after turning 18. Lukas Nmecha is another foreign-born Brit who has recently qualified for England without, as far as I know, satisfying any of the conditions under RGAS 7, and there have been others.

All of that said, Quina would still have to have had British citizenship when he first played competitively for Portugal u17s on 29 September 2015. Otherwise, RGAS 8(1)(a) currently states that he'll never be able to switch to England. So the crucial question remains: did he acquire British citizenship through a parent in one of the ways mentioned above before 29 September 2015? Articles such as this one from 2016 suggest that he probably didn't, but they may not have known all of the details.

If Quina did have British citizenship on 29 September 2015 through one of the non-residency routes mentioned above, then the Home Nations Agreement actually would apply to him, and he would become eligible for England after 5 years of education in England. If he had British citizenship on 29 September 2015 through one of the non-residency routes mentioned above and the Home Nations Agreement was revoked, he would have qualified for England already under RGAS 6(1)(d). So actually they aren't irrelevant considerations until we can be certain that he didn't have British citizenship on 29 September 2015.

As an aside, but not an irrelevant one, the eligibility criteria have changed multiple times over the last 15 years in particular, so there's no reason to think that the current formulation is set in stone.

Well yes, but having worked as a lawyer, I can honestly say that the FIFA Statutes are some of the most ineptly drafted, ambiguous, brainlessly conceived and inconsistently applied laws that I've ever come across. They're constantly creating absurd situations requiring another poorly executed adjustment every few years, which lasts until that inevitably creates another absurd situation. It's hardly surprising that administrators and journalists struggle to get to grips with the current state of affairs when even FIFA doesn't seem to be able to implement its own rules - see East Timor's national team, for instance - and even less surprising that ordinary Brits and, apparently, the odd Swede can't quite the hang of it.

But not to worry. Give it a couple more years and they'll have changed again.

 

The Home Nations Agreement applies to players whose British nationality could potentially enable them to play for any of the British associations - England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. For those who were not born in a given UK territory and whose parents and grandparents were not born in that territory, it deletes the eligibility route of two years of residency in the territory, and inserts a requirement of five years of education before the age of eighteen in that territory. Hence Jordan Rhodes qualifies for Scotland because he went to school there for more than five years, whereas James Tavernier will not qualify for Scotland this summer, two years after signing for Rangers. In the absence of the HNA, he would. Similarly, players with forms of British nationality other than citizenship, such as Anguillians, cannot move to a country of the UK and qualify after two years of residency; they too would have to meet the requirement of five years' education before the age of eighteen.

I don't think I've misunderstood it.

The point about the granny rule was about the spirit of the rules. Exploiting the rule is "completely ok" according to the letter of the rules - although nothing in the rules sets out a hierarchy of which criterion is "more ok" than any other. However, it's fairly self-evident that the other associations use it to bring in "ringers" with tenuous connections who do not identify as Scottish, Welsh, or Northern Irish. The Wales captain, for instance, has said that "I know I'm English and I always will be". There's also a 24-year history of the other British and Irish associations exploiting loopholes to call up players that they were never intended to be able to select - from Maik Taylor to David Johnson and so on. Now we have the Welsh FA setting up younger and younger national camps with the clear intention of getting into the heads of predominantly English kids before they form a relationship with the England set-up. Honestly, if we were to set up a creche then they'd start holding ultrasound camps. And with all of this going on, we're keeping up the pretence of a "gentleman's agreement"?

It's worth noting, incidentally, that until 1993 we had a "gentleman's agreement" with the other Home Nations not to use FIFA's granny rule at all, precisely because it was allowing the home nations to poach each other's players on the basis of tenuous links. I'm not sure why we ever ditched it, but I'm guessing that that wasn't England's choice. Since there's clearly no particularly noble intent behind the current agreement and it mostly disadvantages us, we should renegotiate it or, failing that, scrap it and make each decision on its merits - we can still choose not to call players up for reasons other than ability if it seems wrong to do so.

Agreed. They tend to be better players moving to England than to Scotland/Wales/Northern Ireland too.

 

Can't find an article but heard it on the radio that Daniel Levy has serious reservations about signing Zaha because the player could be gone 3-4 weeks due to African Cup of Nations commitments with Ivory Coast. Obviously if he stayed with England the problem wouldn't exists, so I wonder if others thinking of switching Nationalities to an African Country like Nigeria might think twice?

 

There was an article about it in the guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/may/01/tottenham-hotspur-crystal-palace-wilfried-zaha

They also claim that Ross Barkley could end up being Tottenham's main target this summer instead.

 

I'd very much like that.

 

You won't need three guesses to work out which nation is after Manchester United's Scott McTominay: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/man-united-kid-scott-mctominay-10371311

 

Yes! In my head I guessed Scotland.

Well if he has a desire to play for them then so be it, but like always if we cap him at youth level then he'll probably pick us.

 

Apparently he's already been part of Scottish training camps at younger ages and considers himself "more Scottish than English". We're not favourites here.

 

he's stated he feels more Scottish than English.

 

Dier has said before that he feels more Portuguese than English.

 

That's not the impression I'd take from what he's said:

"If England can't win anything then I want Portugal to win. I was very happy for them, but never once did I think I should be playing for Portugal ...I'm English. I've never said the opposite. I'm 100 per cent English. ...When I grew up, I always had the idea that I would play for England. I'm fully English, but Portugal is my home."

http://www.skysports.com/football/n...ic-dier-does-not-regret-turning-down-portugal

 

"I feel Portuguese, but my parents aren't Portuguese, none of my family are Portuguese, so I don't think I'd feel right playing for Portugal when I had a chance to play for England."

 

They pounce on every opportunity they get : http://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/05/ademola-5-nigerian-youngsters-named-england-world-cup-squad/

 

Yeah, I saw these articles yesterday, I'm sure there just doing it to wind us up, lol

 

He was capped at U18s level by Scotland, and I highly doubt he has what it takes to reach the level that England will consider calling him up so nothing to see here.