English players Dual Nationality thread

And not to be called up the senior team again. Tbf he is Welsh, but as soon as they found out that He was also eligible for England, they swiftly brought him on for couple of minutes to tie him to them.

 

The calling up of Ethan Ampadu really is a joke! There is no way he warranted a call up. I was critical of the woodburn call up, to which I maintain was a move to tie him down. Cole da silva probably next.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-4561994/Why-youngsters-choosing-Wales-England.html

I must have missed something along the way but it sounds like Roberts is treating International football almost like Club football. He has a laugh playing for Wales, how does that make you feel more Welsh than English? I just don't get it, after reading this how he feels more Welsh than English.

 

He does say "It's always been about passion and pride and playing for the country.", but the rest of what he says is about the non-passion/pride based perks and how much pride and passion did he really inherit form that one Welsh grandfather?

 

From what I can gather, he has Welsh grandparents plural. I'm not sure if that's two, three, or four though.

 

I don't know if there's a better source saying something different elsewhere but that Mail article explicitly says Welsh grandfather singular.

 

Yeah, I don't know. There are articles specifying "grandparents" in the BBC, the Birmingham Mail, and Wales Online, but really any of the four could be wrong. I saw enough articles claiming that Angel Gomes was born in Portugal to make me reluctant to trust anyone's research.

 

Re: Tyler Roberts - So much for national identity and patriotism for one's country. Makes me wonder if he was brought up with anti-English sentiments. .

 

Also just picking up little snippets maybe but if I was that passionate and proud, I would have said ' My ' Country rather than just 'the' but maybe I'm being picky.

 

So much publicity for one so young already : http://www.celticfc.net/news/12742

 

Tyler Roberts was brought up a stones throw away from Wales, with Welsh family, his allegiance surely isn't too hard to understand?

 

I was born just over the border from Liverpool. It didn't make me a Scouser though.

 

Probably not a good thing he's at Celtic because he'll be under pressure to select Scotland. He gets abuse whenever he posts anything about England on Instagram.

 

This response would make an ounce of sense if i'd suggested that everyone in Gloucester feels Welsh.

 

I don't think Gloucester's proximity to Wales has any more relevance than Kent's proximity to France making them feel French? I can't imagine where your grandad is born has much relevance to your identity either - I know because mine is scotch and it doesn't make me feel scottish because I've never lived there. But then Roberts at least isn't trying that cringey bs to justify himself the way the Irish granny rulers are forced to harp on about how they went on holiday to some random Irish bog a couple of times when they were kids to somehow prove their lifelong affinity to the shamrock
He plays for Wales because they picked him first ; thats a problem the FA are targeting by introducing an Under-15's team which they didn't have before. Sadly it is too late with Woodburn and Roberts and others.
I'm dead against Brexit but one way to kill stone dead these defections to other countries would be if we introduce limits to non England eligibles playing in the english league system when we're able to - including Swansea and Cardiff as they're english where it suits them!

 

An ounce, eh? Well as you said, they likely would have been "brought up a stones throw away from Wales".

 

That has a lot to do with Kent and France not sharing a border? The lines between Gloucester and Wales are blurred in a lot of places, English people work over the border in Wales and vice versa. Just like with Woodburn and Chester/Wales. (and basically every place in the world that has a border)

'I can't imagine where your grandad is born has much relevance to your identity either, because mine doesn't'.

That's the most simplistic and anecdotal point. My Grandparents on one side are Irish, on the other they aren't. I only have a relationship with my Irish grandparents and do feel a connection with Ireland. It's different for everyone, and who knows how Roberts feels, but to claim there's no way he feels any connection or that it's strange is just incredibly small minded.

I get everyone on here wants the best possible England team, and i'm always pretty vocal in wanting us to broaden our pool of players and not let guys slip away. But there does seem to be a mental block for a lot of people on here who can't understand that someone may have a connection with their 2nd, 3rd, 4th nationality.

 

Just my observation here, but why does it only seem to be the players that didn't/won't make it with England that suddenly feel Irish/Welsh/Jamaican etc and the likes of the top players like Rooney, Kane, Cahill, Sterling and Sturridge all feel more English?

 

I don't think that's what it is. Of course people feel a connection to their 2nd nationality, but what proportion of people with one Welsh grandparent do you think feel a very passionate connection to Wales off the back of that, to the extent where they would favour the nation over England or wherever else they may be from? It's rational, not a mental block, to acknowledge that the reality for the majority of these grandfathered players is it's a team of convenience that gives them perks to try and keep them around.

 

Ok so all these continental countries that share a land border, someone from Bratislava say is going to feel Austrian or Hungarian because they live near the border? Someone from Nice, will feel Italian , a gentleman from Cologne will feel Belgian and somebody from Manchester will feel part scouse, and geordies will feel scottish and vise versa? All because they live in geographical proximity and may know people from the neighbouring area?
Sorry it doesn't work like that. I know people from Herefordshire and tease them about being welsh really but they're really just as english as any of us, you don't start losing your national identity the closer to the corners of a country you get. Do you think if you did a survey of people living in Chester asking how welsh they feel it would really get many answers other than 'not at all'?
Also no matter how close your personal relationship to a grandparent might be, your national identity is shaped by what's immediate to you in terms of where you grow up, you can't pick it up third hand off someone who happened to have been dropped out there. To be fair though, as I mentioned, Roberts has never stated that he feels welsh, same as Ashley Williams has said he never did. If they didn't happen to be professional footballers its probably not something they would have given a second thought about.

 

With a Welsh family.

C'mon chap, let's have some nuance from you. I haven't said everyone will. You're twisting my argument into absolutes. But if you have Welsh family, then there's a reason you might feel Welsh. This feeling might be fostered further by you living somewhere with a lot of other Welsh people and a merging of Welsh and English culture around you growing up. Alongside factors such as the ease you have to visit Wales and maybe spend time with your Welsh family. These are all possible factors. Nowhere have I said that if you live on a border you're guaranteed to feel ties to whatever is on the other side.

 

Well Roberts, Ampadu, Woodburn and Wilson are the example in question right? None of them are choosing it as a last resort because they won't make it with England?

I'm not saying players don't just choose the option that grants them International football either, I personally know lads who aren't good enough for England who have accepted opportunities to play for other nations for a chance to play international football and in turn have developed connections they never had before with places their family came from.

I just think we need to realise this isn't black and white. Everytime this is brought up people go 'I can't possibly imagine why he'd favour them over us'. Then I provide reasons why it might be, and people just stick their head in the sand and suggest that's not possible. I'm just trying to give the balanced argument because it'd be stupid to deny either extreme i.e some just want to play international football with whoever offers with no connection to a nation + some people brought up in England feel more for another nation than us, for a variety of reasons, only a few of which i've tried to display.

 

Norwich City product Dom Dwyer has been called up to the USMNT 40-man provisional roster for the Gold Cup.

 

The most worrying thing about this is that there's a place in England called "Cuckfield".

 

Counting Jack Harrison, even though he's more of a winger, I'd consider Dwyer to be the 3rd best English forward in MLS at the moment. They have to cut about half that squad and I'm not convinced he makes it.