Player Eligibility and Switching National Teams: Case Studies & General Discussion

One-time switches for older players who have already been permanently cap-tied at the senior level, with the restriction that (i) you can only switch to a nation you were already eligible for at the time you were cap tied and (ii) each player has to wait for a "cooling off" period since their last cap (competitive or friendly) to pass before they may switch. How long that period will be is up for debate, but it will need to be long enough to deter most players from trying to use the option on a whim, and it will vary by age.

The rule could state, for example, that a permanently cap tied player whose last cap occurred aged 22 must (i) endure a cooling off period ending on the date that is 6 years after the date of that final cap and (ii) must not have been capped at all, in any match, in that time period. This cool down period declines by one year for each cap received at higher ages until it reaches 4 years at age 24. Keep it there until age 29, when it declines to 3 years, and then drop to 2 years at age 31 (so the players whose last cap occurred at 30 can switch by 33, as can the players whose last cap occurred at 31). For players permanently cap tied before the age of 22 (guys who went beyond the 3 caps they're allowed to get prior to that age), add a year until you get to 10 for players whose last cap came at age 18.

You can play around with the numbers and add some more nuance (maybe reducing the cool down period for players with a minimal number of caps, etc), but that would be the general gist of the rule.

So to apply some examples, let's say this rule exists and Raheem Sterling wants to make a switch to represent Jamaica since he's spare parts for England now (if that). His last cap came in December of 2022, after he had just turned 28. Applying the 4 year cool-off, he's eligible to switch to Jamaica in December of 2026.

Jadon Sancho was 21 when last capped, so he has a 7 year cooling off period - he can switch to Trinidad, Guyana or Jamaica in 2028. Danny Welbeck was last capped age 27, so has a 4 year wait - he would have been able to switch to Ghana just in time for World Cup 2022. Steve Nzonzi could have switched to DR Congo in 2022, having last been capped by France at age 31 (just before his 32nd birthday) in 2020. You get the idea.

There would be some nuances to tie up but if crafted properly this would be a useful way for some veteran players who have aged out of larger international sides to continue to play internationally if they want it, and a good way for smaller teams to bolster their player pools and raise their quality. Guys like Sterling, Nzonzi, and Welbeck are useless to England or France today but could still be key players for countries like Ghana, DR Congo or Jamaica. You could also get some cool stories out of it, like Ashley Cole going through a world cup cycle with Barbados in the twilight of his career or Jesse Lingard trying to start anew with St. Vincent and the Grenadines, etc.

None of this is in the cards this year, but I do genuinely believe some variation of what I'm talking about will become a reality in our lifetimes, and probably sooner rather than later.

 

Sorry but I think any world cup appearance or confederation cup appearance should end any possibility of switching. Or else it just becomes a joke.

I'm for loosening the rules, but that should just be a red line.

No world cup or confederational cup appearances.

So world cup qualifying and confederational cup qualifying games can apply to switches but not the tournaments themselves.

 

I would draw the line on WC qualifying matches as well. One can imagine the wankfest of pundits celebrating the *first athlete to play qualifiers across two/three different confeds*.

It is no coincidence that these rules are being relaxed ahead of FIFA's announcement of 2034 WC hosts.

Who were the naturalized players used by the host of 2022 WC? That is not how to grow the sport, but how to buy your way into it.

 

That seems fine to me. I don't think that would be too big of an issue. The current rules allowing switches before age 21 do prevent a switch if the player has played in a WC or a continental final. So I think those limitations would carry over here.

To be clear, I don't think it would be a "joke" per se for such players to switch but I don't think the limitation is wildly unreasonable and I imagine that when the provisions I'm talking about do come to pass (and they will), you will probably see this qualifier excluding WC/Continental final tournament appearances. It's a little unfortunate that this would keep some players out of international football but so be it.

I don't think that's reasonable. There are too many qualifiers that simply aren't that significant. A player cap tied for the USA because of an early stage qualifier against St. Vincent and the Grenadines shouldn't be barred from a switch.

Also, three confederations? How? I'm not sure that would be possible even with the very relaxed rules I proposed. The max would be two, as any change of a cap-tied player would be a one-time switch (and a player who made a one-time switch earlier, perhaps as a youth international or something, wouldn't be able to do another one).

 

I would be stricter and say 10 years cooling off period for every case.

So if players in France or Netherlands want to play in the Gold Cup with their Caribbean heritage counter-parts or something.
But other than that I think it is not my cup of tea.

 

My formulation is VERY permissive and I'm open to playing around with the numbers as I suspect any final version of this rule that does come to reality will be significantly more strict than mine.

But I do think 10 years in all cases is just too long. It would make that scenario with French/Dutch players, for example, virtually impossible and neuter the intent of the rule (which is to spread talent out). There would almost be no point to the rule change with a period that long, IMO.

I think if a player sits out two full World Cup cycles (8 years), that should be more than sufficient for all cases, and I think for older players one full WC cycle (maybe a little longer, call it 5 years) is enough. I could support a ten year period for players who are cap tied very early (under 20).The numbers should be restrictive enough to eliminate cynical gaming of the system and make the switch difficult for most and very hard (nearly impossible) for players who are key to large national sides late in their careers, but short enough to still make switching realistic and viable for good players who are not quite in their prime and no longer useful to bigger national sides, but still good enough to significantly raise the level of smaller teams. I think my numbers strike that balance most effectively with the sliding scale by age.

 

I doubt that VIN would view such match as insignificant. Even from the USA side, there are plenty young footballers who would rush to a WC qualifiers call-up regardless of their rival. Perhaps that should be the spirit of NT call-ups: develop youth national squads whenever senior qualifiers provide the opportunity.

To me, FIFA sends a mixed message to FAs: let us erode player eligibility rules because you guys surely are not strengthening national squads at the grassroots level.
At best, it acknowledges that UEFA-based talent must also occupy spots in non-UEFA squads. At worst, it is implicit permission for corrupt FAs to pocket *football development* funds because FAs can always import UEFA rejects.

How has the imported-player model worked for JAM?
In 2022 WC qualifiers, 42 JAM players saw minutes, where 15 were developed by other federations: placed 6th of 8 teams, final Concacaf qualifiers phase.
One wonders whether JAM has benefited from such approach.

 

I'm half Vincentian, my father is from the island. I'm not here to insult St. Vincent gratuitously, it's personally an important place to me. It's a minnow in world football and the one-sided, generally uncompetitive qualifiers it plays against sides of the USA's caliber are not significant in the grand scheme of things. Vincentians might treat a draw with the USA like a World Cup qualification, and that's great, but that's not what it is. That's just the reality of the situation.

That's fine, I agree with that spirit, but a qualifier that is utilized as a glorified friendly for youth development doesn't have the same significance as a continental final or a World Cup match and we don't need to pretend it does.

Corruption is an issue and can be dealt with separately, but it isn't an excuse to dismiss all efforts to even the spread of talent in world football or acknowledge structural inequities that exist (and always will exist) and attempt to address them in even small ways.

FIFA is not sending a mixed message, it is acknowledging a reality in world football: there are massive divides globally among nations that are not entirely down to incompetence and mismanagement, but also down to structural realities (lack of capital, small market, high emigration, etc). We have the "haves" (disproportionately in UEFA) and the "have-nots" (most of the developing world). Even with legitimate work to build at the grassroots level, these gaps are massive and allowing "have-nots" with limited resources to tap into their diasporas in "haves" who consider said diasporans to be spare parts is one small way to close the gap, a little.

The gap will always be massive, it's ok to try to make it a little less massive in ways that don't harm anyone.

We have - integrating dual nationals got us to our first and only world cup, and also launched us to our first Gold Cup final. Our player pool is generally vastly superior when it integrates the diaspora, and it's not really debatable.

I'll just be totally frank here since I think this perspective doesn't get a lot of play in these discussions as fans from smaller nations with large diasporas don't speak a lot: inclusion of the diaspora is not an option for us - we aren't the USA. We have damn near no capital (and few pathways to obtain any capital) and half of all of us don't even reside on the island (we are the place people emigrate from, not to - the latter is a luxury). We can improve our station, but the pathways to doing so all involve significant integration of players and personnel developed outside of the country. The skepticism you have of the diaspora just isn't something we can afford. You can wonder about the benefits - we're going to wonder a lot less, because we don't have the options you take for granted. We'd sing your tune more if we did, but we don't and we have to deal with that.

 

Uruguay, a country with a similar population size to Jamaica, depends on the one-senior-competitive-match rule to cap-tie youth players before they are picked off by the so-called *haves* of the world.

URU tests youth players against minnows in WC senior qualifiers because that is a good way to on-board them into the men's squad. Besides earning senior team minutes, youth players get to chat/room/eat with senior squad members on a competitive context. It is about creating team cohesion across age bands with the end goal of building a competitive senior squad.

Weakening the senior cap rule opens the window for richer federations to steal talent which smaller countries have begun to enlist into senior squads. And for what? Just so inefficient federations can scramble for UEFA's table scraps?

 

Just to start here, we don't exist in the same football universe as Uruguay and I do not think they are a great example to make your case. Uruguay is a world power in football with multiple world cup titles, multiple Olympic gold medals, more Copa America wins than anyone not named Argentina, an economy about 3 times Jamaica's size and real pedigree and infrastructure built over the better part of a century. They are a nation that even the Americans (who are very much "haves") are looking up to.

I really wish we were comparable to Uruguay in football in any way, shape or form, but we are not. Not even close.

Uruguay is a "have".

There will absolutely be instances of larger nations taking promising talent from smaller ones with a weaker cap tie rule. Even have-nots like Jamaica aren't immune to this - Omari Hutchinson, who has played for Jamaica 3 times, just re-committed to England (accepting U-21 call ups) and it was the new softer cap-tie rule that allowed him to do so. He committed to us aged 18, before he established himself at the senior level for his club. He won 3 caps, and the international experience was definitely beneficial to him as a person and a footballer, for all of the reasons you mentioned Uruguayan youth players benefit from being around senior players.

It was on the back of this growth that Hutchinson secured a loan from Chelsea to Ipswich last season, established himself as a senior in the EFL, won promotion to the EPL, and is now getting regular EPL minutes. He promptly began dodging our call-ups after he won his 3rd cap in early 2023 and got established as a first-teamer at Ipswich in the Championship, clearly to keep the England door open (regular EFL minutes at that age usually put you firmly in the England U21 picture). England pushed hard to reintegrate him, and now he's out of Jamaica's player pool.

All of that is to say that yes, I hear what you are saying and I am by no means implying that this rule will benefit have-nots over haves in every single instance - the haves will occasionally pick off a player through this softer rule. But I am saying that it will quite disproportionately benefit the have-nots, and I think that's pretty hard to argue against. There's a lot more talent flowing from deeper player pools of established football powers than vice versa, and it isn't very close - the haves simply have a much larger number of quality players they will discard. It is a large net benefit for the have-nots, and that's all we need to see here - the alternative tighter rules are far less favorable them.

I already explained why this problem cannot be solved with "efficiency". Even a perfectly efficient federation doing everything right faces significant structural disparities. We can't ever fully eliminate those, but the softer switch rules offer a large net benefit to the world's have-nots that closes the gap at least a little bit, and that's worthwhile enough.

Uruguay (who are a world power in football) and Jamaica (who are not) will both be fine.

 

Rugby union has rather flexible national eligibility rules, and it's a mess.

Fiji, Samoa and Tonga don't need to have proper development programs, because they just get players born and raised in Australia and New Zealand. Likewise, Wales and Scotland get lots of players from the English club system.

Meanwhile, Argentina, Uruguay and Georgia have purely homegrown rugby communities, and can't poach players from their diaspora because those don't play rugby.