Found this little tid bit on another ukrainian soccer net site. I think he makes some good points in regards to naturalizing players. Anyone remember Olisabede with Poland? "We need to understand what fillings our Ukrainians have while playing in national team. It won't give a result in a short period time. Strangers will never play for an idea, they will play only for money" "You can trust me, we can play good football and that is the secret of our success. It's impossible to re-form players not physically, neither tactically within few days. We just need to set their psychology" "I always explain to players that the appearance in final stage of World Cup is very prestigious - it will bring new contracts and a good deal of money to them. We have chances to host Euro2012 together with Poland, it will enhance our prestige even more. If we win this tender, it will be very great", - Blokhin added
well, what i think he is saying is that a player must have pride to play for their country and not worry about the money, because the money will eventually come later. On that note, i have been watching the Youth World Cup and those guys show a lot of heart. They have lots of pride when they play and at the same time, realize that eventually they will be making good money, some more than others.
I'm 100% behind Blokhin's thinking. I think we've had enough foreigners in our clubs (DK, ahem, ahem), there's no need to have them on the national team.
You're saying there's no need now, when we're doing so well. People had very different opinions 2 years ago on this subject.
I'm just wondering, was Olexander Horshkov a naturalized player? Because i see he played for Russia at one time before playing for Ukraine.
Fifa rules state that if a player played for a certain senior national side, he can not play for another national side. My guess is that Horshkov played for a youth Russia team, and more likely then not he's from eastern ukraine, where there is a huge russian population.
Actually, I beleive as long as you only play friendlies for a certain country, you're not tied to that country. Which is why Oleg Salenko and Ilya Tsymbalar played for Ukraine and then switched to Russia.