I am getting a bit confused, because there seem to have been many changes implemented over the last few years. What are the current rules regarding naturalization? (if someone could please link to an official document addressing this matter). Am I correct that a foreign player is supposed to play for at least 5 years in a country's national championship (or simply reside for at least 5 years in the country) before he is allowed to represent the national side? How about a player who has been capped for the U-20 or U-21 national squad, could he switch to another national team? What are your personal views? Should naturalization rules become more or less rigorous?
Sorry, no answer to your initial question. But my opinion is that if you move to another country as a football player, you should never be allowed to play for that country's national team. If you move as a child or your parents come from a certain country, I'm ok with a switch to that country if one feels a greater allegiance to his new country than to his old. I hate that a player like Francileudo dos Santos plays for Tunisia. I'm sure that, as a young kid in Brazil, he had absolutely no ties to, or feelings for, Tunisia, but when fate had it that he would two seasons in that country, he received his citizenship and became a Tunisian football player. I find that absolutely disgusting, but not quite as bad as a big footballing nation like Portugal, who should absolutely be able to find their own batch of excellent players, but still feel the need to boost their team with Brazilians such as Deco, Pepe and Liedson. That's certainly one way of securing that you'll never hit a dry spell talent wise when you can always import players to fill the positions where you have shortcomings. Charming!
@Michele, thanks, I totally agree with your position! I hate it when national teams are creating a mockery out of the international game. I don't understand how the fans are able to identify with the team in cases like that. I hope that Blatter sticks to his guns and continues to be strict when it comes to such matters.
You'll find that it's not Blatter who decides on the nationality of footballers but the law maker in a given country. FIFA can interfere only when a player has been capped for another country in the past. FIFA hasn't got a passport office. I believe no exception should be made for footballers when it comes to naturalisation, not in the negative and not for the positive. For example: if you arrive in the Netherlands at the age of eighteen, get a job as a cleaner or as a rocket scientist, and live and pay taxes here for five years you are entitled to a Dutch passport. Why should this rule be different for footballers. Your nationality is what it says in your passport. Arguments about 'your country should be in your heart' lead down the very slippery slope of discrimination, i.e. who are you to decide if a player is Dutch, French, German etc enough. [people who reply to this post; please leave out the 'you would say that what with all of those Surinamese players in the Dutch squad. Check the Dutch squad and conclude for yourself that every single player in the Holland squad was born and raised in the NL]
The rules behind qualification for international football have always been complicated. The original rule where a footballer could only play for his country of birth was often made a mockery of by nations taking advantage of these stringant rules. For example Joe Baker was born in England, spent his early life in the USA before his family moved to Scotland where he played his entire career for Hibs. In 1959, without even kicking a ball in England, he was picked for their National side much to anger of the Scottish. Just to make things more complicate his brother Gerry played for the USA. The current residency rules, while not perfect, have at least given the choice of the nation a player wants to represent back in to his own hands rather than a Federation.
Current FIFA rules (I think) say that a naturalised player must reside in his adopted country for 5 years after the age of 18. A player capped in youth football can only switch allegience if he was a citizen of both countries at the time he was capped, and then only under certain conditions. If you are capped at youth level, and then become a citizen of another country after that you cannot switch to your new country. It's up to the country concerned. I think FIFA's over 18 rule (unless they've since changed it) was a bit strange as someone who comes to a country as a child because his parents migrated cannot play international football until 23 unless he goes back to his country of birth, which may be a country he doesn't even remeber ever being in.
@Johan Neeskens, nice points raised! True, but what I meant was that Blatter could still have a significant influence on the matter in a more indirect way - as you pointed out, nothing prevents the state of Qatar (to take one example) from issuing a passport to a Brazilian, even if he has never set foot in the Arabic country, but Blatter and FIFA could still say - "you cannot play him in official national team competitions, unless certain criteria (like years of residence) have been satisfied". It may seem paradoxical, but I get the impression that the criteria that have to be satisfied for sporting eligibility go beyond those that have to be fulfilled for gaining citizenship (depends on the sport - for instance, the international basketball federation seems to be less strict when it comes to naturalization). In addition, I think that in the past international law did not permit the mass naturalization of foreign citizens/subjects, who lacked family/cultural ties to the country issuing the passports. I concur, this seems like a fair solution. However, there is one additional caveat - let's say that it only takes three months to get citizenship in Oman (no matter one's occupation), but 10 years to obtain citizenship in South Korea. A five year residence requirement (applicable to all countries) could seem like a reasonable cut-off point for sporting purposes, as it could bring about a level playing field. I totally agree, I have absolutely no issue with Surinamese players representing the Netherlands or footballers from overseas départements playing for France (as they are born and raised in the country, speak the language and so on). My only beef is with countries that tend to abuse naturalization procedures (e.g. those in which footballers are privileged relative to chemists, engineers etc.). @winsfordtown, indeed, could be a very grey area at times..I accept that sometimes players might be eligible for 3 or even 4 countries and they should have the freedom to choose. Their final decision shouldn't be unduly scrutinized. @almango, excellent, a very informative post, that's what I wanted to know! In this case, the current rules are fine as they are, at least from my perspective. The only thing that I don't like is the new regulation stipulating that if you are capped in a friendly match, you could still switch national team - could be a slippery slope, as players may be tempted to experiment (e.g. test the waters by playing friendlies for different national sides, if they receive call-ups by the managers). I echo your sentiments with regards to the over 18 rule.
Some may argue that the most terrible abuses are when rich countries like Canada offer jobs and easy access to citizenship to chemists, engineers, etc. of poor countries where they are more needed. Loosing some footballers is not really an issue compared to that…
Simply taking citizenship as criterium is not strong enough I think, it creates too many loopholes and there are too vaste differences between international rules. 5 years in residence is OK I think. If you've lived in a country for 5 or more years, you have a connection to it.
5 years sounds reasonable to me as well, but I'm not sure why FIFA made it so the 5 years was over 18. They've already made exceptions to this rule. We had a player in our under 20 squad last year who came to Australia as a child (7 years old I think) and had played in the qualifiers when the rule change to over 18 years suddenly made him ineligible. On appeal FIFA changed his status and allowed him to play for Australia. There is a difficult balance. We've had lots of naturalised players play for Australia over the years, but then we had a very large migration programme post WWII and we had (and still have) a significant portion of our population born in other countries.
My understanding is that the only players who aren't cap tied by friendlies are those who are eligible to play for another country at the time of the friendly. They must already be dual citizens.
Interesting, that's an important caveat, the rule seems much more reasonable that way. As for the chief "culprits", it seems as if Togo and Qatar played a major role in indirectly paving the way for the current regulations (e.g. Togo naturalized 5 Brazilians for an African Cup of Nations qualifier). It's good that FIFA finally said "Enough is enough"!
This reminds me of Frank Sinclair who rang Glenn Hoddle to see whether he was in his future plans with England. When Hoddle gave a none committal answer decided to try out with Jamaica. This is just so wrong on every level.
Some pundits are discussing the possibility of Mikel Arteta playing for England. However, the Everton midfielder has been capped for Spain at U21, U18, as well as at U17 level (and he didn't have English citizenship when amassing these caps), so they are probably forgetting that he is not eligible to play for England? (or perhaps there is some sort of a loophole in his case).
The worst offender of late was Qatar who had already naturalized players like saad ali , ali turki , yaseen ismail , hashem basheer , khaled abdi , omar adelkader , erfan ali saeed and then after appointing a Uruguayan coach went on another blitz for the 2010 WCQ's.I think there were 7 naturalised players from Uruguay,Argentina and Africa in those matches After the crackdown that followed we learned that Qatar had set up an academy-basically raping Africa of its talent and then Naturalising them.The worst part is that they are promoting this program for their WC bid Here is a very fresh update on the whole unbelievable situation http://www.timeslive.co.za/sport/article615899.ece/Oil-rich-Qatar-circles-young-SA-footballers
I'm not aware of any historical cases to support that position. In general, FIFA regulations are quite clear that only official competition games (i.e., NOT friendlies) bear on cap-tying a player. (You might be remembering the Adu thing, and remembering it backwards; there, the debate was whether Adu's appearance in a friendly revoked his option to make a change of association after being provisionally tied to the U.S. by age-group play. Such a debate would no longer exist, as the regulations now clearly state that such an appearance does not remove the on-time switch option.)
There's even a facebook group for it and it's only getting worse, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=10411522604 The purpose of this group is to expose the QFA as the worst football association in the middle east (and possibly the world).Qatar has one of the world's most strict immigration laws and to get the citizenship is practically impossible. Unless an Emir or Sheik grants it to you. However, when it comes to their national team, they just buy foreign players and give them citizenship so they can play on their team.Your national team should have members of your country...thats the whole point of a NATIONAL TEAM.Buying foreign players does not prove that country's superiority in football, it just proves they have money. It's a shame international football has sunk to this level!!!!So congratulations Qatar for having 15+ out of 29 of your players NON-QATARI. Mohammed Saqer - Senegal Papa Malick Ba - Senegal Ali Nasser - Yemen Abdulla Koni - Senegal Mostafa Abdi Ibrahim Majid Moaz Yousef Mesaad Al -Hamad - Yemen Sayyed Ali AlBasheer - Mauritania Husain Yasser Mohammedy - Egypt Ali Hassan Afeefi Majed Mohammed - Sudan Saad Sattam Al-Shamari - Saudi (but claims to be Qatari) Abdullah Al Breek Mustafa Jalal Talal Al-Boloshi - Kuwait Wesam Rizq - Palestine Mujtaba Said Jaafar Waleed Jassim - Iran Aadel Lami - Kuwait Sebastien Soria - Uruguay Waleed Hamza - Pakistan Younus Ali Rahmati Mohammed Ghulam Yousef Ahmad Rajab Hamza Bilal Mohammed Ibrahim Al-Ganim Meshal Mobarak
Wow, that's a disgrace, Qatar are continuing to set terrible examples...and it's not only in football - many Kenyan athletes run for Qatar and a few years ago the Arab nation granted passports to a bunch of weightlifters from Eastern Europe (and changed their original names to Islamic sounding ones) to represent them at the Olympics. I really can't understand how the Qataris could bask in the glory of any successes that are due to the efforts of the imported athletes. Kazakhstan is also notorious in this regard - they have naturalized tennis players from Eastern Europe (who were lacking any ties to the country). Azerbaijan is also on the same boat with regards to a number of sports. @Gnafron, very good point, it should not only be an issue when it comes to sport. @Michael, thanks for the link, some of my friends may be willing to join the group.
I'm afraid there's no loophole for him at least. Since he played for Spain at youth level, he would have to have been eligible to play for England before he reached 22 to be able to change his national team. After 21 he cannot asked for a change. This applies only for players who represented 1 country already.
Very true and here is an article on this subject: http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/.../fifa-sinks-englands-arteta-plan-2067952.html