Has the notion of Luciano Emilio joining the US team ever been brought up? Heck nowadays every team has a Brazilian on their national team and since he has not played for Brazil I believe he would fill a massive void in the attack for the US. What say you?
America has well over 300,000,000 people. We don't need to naturalize Brazilians to field a good team. The US isn't Qatar or the United Arab Emirates, where they don't have enough of a natural-born player pool to put teams together.
it's not on there now, but i swear to God i checked on wikipedia last week for the brazil national football team and Luciano Emilio was on there. I'm sure some hardcore DCU fan probably just put him on there, but i was like what the hell? when did Luciano Emilio get called up for Brazil.
Rumor, https://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=497037&page=3, has it that the Honduran team wants him on their side.
It's been rumored that Honduras has, is or was talking to Emilio about citizenship in order to play for them. He played and live there for 4 years. I believe this was mentioned on the DCU-LA telecast. I'd love to have Emilio but by the time he gains citizenship he will be old.
At times like these I hate bigsoccer. Every guy that hasn't been capped for his country and who happens to be in the US playing decent ball doesn't need a thread about finding a way to give him citizenship to cap him. Good gracious.
But don't you know: Eddie Johnson and Michael Bradley are terrible, terrible soccer players! We'll never even beat Guatemala with those two on the team! With the worst coach in the world leading our side, our only chance to even qualify for the world cup is to bring in Kenny Cooper, Brian Ching and a bunch of naturalized Brazilians!
Let's not get carried away! EJ & MB are not that bad, and were not that bad. And you can't put Cooper & Ching on the same pitch since they are both target forwards. And as far as getting Emilio on our team, I'm all for it, if it's a real possiblitiy. Look at Germany, they have Podolski (Poland) & Klose (Switzerland), two of their best goal scorers.
Blatter fears growing trend of naturalised Brazilians http://football.uk.reuters.com/world/news/L25176955.php
Don't get me started on Bradley, because it hasn't nothing to do with him or specific players. These type of threads were around during the good part of Arena's reign. For some reason, some posters have this woody for any non-American who they think we can naturalize and cap, regardless of who we have available.
Emilio was born 12/12/78. He came to the US in February or March of 07. Let's say he gets a Green Card rather quickly, by Green Card standards, and it takes only three years. That's spring of 2010. Once he gets his Green Card - which you can't become a naturalized citizen without - let's say he manages to get his citizenship processed REALLY quickly and gets it done in two years. Now it's spring of 2012. Emilio is 33 and able to play for the US in time for qualifying for the 2014 World Cup. Do you really see a 33-year old making his international debut and being effective for our national team? It's possible, yes. But doubtful. And that's under the best-case, fastest realistic scenario for getting naturalized. Once again: there's a reason no player who came to the US for the purpose of playing in MLS has gone on to be naturalized and play for the US and that's primarily because it just takes too damn long to become a US citizen and most of the internationals are in their mid 20's, at best, when they come to the US. (That, and most of the internationals who've come to the US have been already cap-tied to another country.) The exceptions, like Panchito Mendoza and Andre Rocha are young enough that if they stick around MLS for the next few years they might pull it off and be able to play for the US. But guys like Emilio and Christian Gomez were, in terms of going on to play for the US, just too old when they came here.
Blatter has a broken clock moment. I would really like a rule that a player who has never lived in a country by his 21st birthday and doesn't have a path to citizenship can never player for that country. There was that Nigerian who scored against us from Poland, there's Senna. England has talked about capping Cudicini. It's a bad trend. Guys like Rossi or Adu and so forth, that's one thing. Even if someone like Parkhurst were to play for Ireland (assuming he's eligible for citizenship, which I've heard) is "inside the line." But this Senna/Preki crap sucks. I note with pride that the US hasn't pulled shenanigan like this for 10 years, and even with Regis, he wasn't in the US playing club soccer. I'll bet Preki is the last of these ridiculous moves by the US.
I'm sorry, what was ridiculous about the US making Preki part of the national team? He came here in 1985 at age 20 to play in the MISL, married an American woman, started and raised a family and then was part of the inception of the American first division. He'd lived in the country 11 years by the time he was naturalized and had obviously adopted it has his home. It wasn't like strings were pulled to get him citizenship fast-tracked or anything. Just a good immigrant story, IMO. Why should folks who adopt this country as their own AND contribute to the sport in this country be denied the right to play for it just because they immigrated here a little later in life?
Somehow I dont think coming here at 6 years old is quite the same thing as Marcos Senna playing for Spain after moving there to play for Villareal at 26.
The residency-based path to Spanish citizenship is a lot more understandable than for U.S. citizenship. Also, the players get pressure from the clubs to take the citizenship option when it becomes available because of the non-EU player limits. There are lots of naturalized foreign-born players in La Liga, and many more who are soon to be.