Edu for England?

[Easy 10]

no no NO.
Edu is B-r-a-z-i-l-i-a-n. The fact that he choses to reside in this country and ply his trade here is an utter IRRELEVENCE to the England team. 1 or 2 would NOT be fine, cos thats just the start - once you set a precedence with the England team and start allowing foreign nationals to play, then we're going to start looking all over the place for potential foreign nationals to draft in.

"Who's eligable next year for England then ?"
"Oh well there's Pedro Iglasias at Charlton, Mario de Fabio at Spurs, Hertz Van Rental at Villa...."

As if the best young english talent isn't getting suppressed enough at the top level already by the foreign invasion, we now want to start plugging gaps in the England side with them as well ? Listen - if they're NOT good enough for their OWN national sides, then I DON'T want them in the England team.
For christs sake.

 

[mejonaNO12 aka riskit]

.

"Who's eligable next year for England then ?"
"Oh well there's Pedro Iglasias at Charlton, Mario de Fabio at Spurs, Hertz Van Rental at Villa...."

.

de fabio is a nifty little player

 

[Brovion]

OK, so Easy 10 is all in favor of Edu playing then..... I don't think we can afford to be so picky, fortunately we haven't in the past. John Barnes is Jamacian and Terry Butcher is Chinese! (He was born in Hong Kong) What about Hargreaves? He's only slightly more English than Greg Rudestki (sp). They want to play for us, that's good enough for me - it's like people wanting to play for Brighton.

And so what if they're Brazilian cast-offs? Brazil are a better footballing nation than us, their weaker players are still a good standard for second tier nations like us. It's like in Cricket where in the 80s when the West Indies were all-powerful Phil DeFreitas and Gladstone Small, both born in the Carribean, opted to play for England because they weren't good enough for the Windies. They played their hearts out for England - especially when we were playing their birth nation.

I also hope Easy you never cheered when Linford Christie won medals for Britain - he was born in the West Indies as well!

 

[mejonaNO12 aka riskit]

come on sven, you know it makes sense

 

[Stumpy Tim]

he wouldn't get in the team anyway. He's not even a squad player IMHO

 

[Marshy]

No thanks ta. He aint good enuff.

 

[mejonaNO12 aka riskit]

he is good enough. outstanding for arsenal this season. left footed. and better than bloody phil neville/nicky butt.

 

[Stumpy Tim]

Different player to Butt. A million times better than Phil Neville (as is Charlie Oatway). But not as good as many players who aren't regulars in the squad like Scott Parker

 

[Gary Nelson]

I would rather have the current squad than add someone like Edu and achieve a bit mroe. I dont think he is the difference between winnig a trophy and not.
Also dont want us to degenerate into a laughing stock like the Irish where you have that tool Morrison who is clearly as Irish as Viv Richards playing for them.

 

[mejonaNO12 aka riskit]

i do completely understand why u have your disagreements wiyth this idea but on his current form he has been fantastic. sure i feel scholes/gerrard/hargreaves/lampard/parker/beckham are all better obviously but he has got that left foot that we are missing. and it saddens me to say but he is quicker and much better than alan thompson is. i would love to see him given a go on the left really, hes the best option in my opinion. well atleast until james milner becomes a regular(hes brilliant!!!)

 

[Easy 10]

I also hope Easy you never cheered when Linford Christie won medals for Britain - he was born in the West Indies as well!

I am pretty much indifferent to athletics anyway, so if Linford is a West Indian running under the British flag its not something I was aware of, but as I say, I'm not much of a fan of athletics anyway.

In technical terms, a case can be made for putting the likes of Terry Butcher in the same bracket as Edu because he wasn't born here, but there's a whole WORLD of difference between someone who happens to have been born abroad but has actually spent almost his whole life on these shores, and someone who has been over here for a few years and is only actually in this country because he is following his profession. I think its ludicrous to propose that a Brazilian, or an Italian, or whatever, should be considered eligable for England just because they joined a Premiership club 2 or 3 years ago and happen to be living in this country as a result.

How can you call it "England" if you potentially have players from all nations representing us ? And why should we consider ourselves so second-rate that we need to cobble a team together from other countries cast-offs ? Last time I checked, England were 7th in the World. We're not some piss-poor tinpot back-water country who should have to trawl around looking for bits of paper to justify playing Brazilians in our National team. We are ENGLAND for crying out loud, not Moldova. Are you seriously telling me you'd rather see Edu on the left side of our midfield than an Englishman, like Gareth Barry ? Madness.

 

[Brovion]

.... are you seriously telling me you'd rather see Edu on the left side of our midfield than an Englishman, like Gareth Barry ? Madness.

I want whoever is best. Edu might not be good enough but that isn't the point. I will concede the point on Butcher but I think once you start saying "Sorry pal, you're not born and bred English so you can just piss off" you start veering uncomfortably towards right-wing territory (I'm talking politics here not football). ScumEngland (The right-wingers) never accepted John Barnes because he "wasn't English".

As I said, other sports do it, Victor Ubogu, Dowie Morris, Kyran Bracken, Mike Catt, Tony Grieg, Mike Deness, Tony Lewis - none of them English.

 

[chips and gravy]

If he wants to let him. I'd far rather someone play for us by choice than someone like Chris Sutton who, depite being English by birth, doesn't give a stuff about playing for us.

 

[Schrödinger's Toad]

Are we really that desperate? He's not really that good, has no great pace but has decent technical ability - the same as Barry, worse than Hargreaves, only slightly better than Thompson - we've got a big enough pool of players without having to resort to picking up other people's scraps

 

[Easy 10]

I want whoever is best.

Well we can't just HAVE "whoever is best".
Never mind comparing who is best and who isn't - if Edu was the best left-sided midfielder in the WORLD, I wouldn't want him playing for England, any more than I'd want Henry playing up front for us, or Maldini in defence. I want the best English talent in the England team, not the best English talent and whoever else we can drag in after a bit of paperwork has been conveniently shuffled. That just defeats the whole point of having a National team.

Anything England achieved whilst having foreigners in the team would be completely devalued for me. Its an admission that we don't have enough talent in certain positions to achieve anything without first plugging gaps with non-English players. We simply don't DESERVE any success at an International level if we end up having to rely on foreign conscripts to boost the team. And thats nor being right-wing, thats just adhering to International sporting values and respecting boundaries.

I don't really care what other sports do either - I care about the England football team.

 

[Brovion]

Obviously we can't have people like Henry as he's already played for France and I certainly don't want to go down the Tony Banks road of saying "If they're in the Premiership then they should be available for England". But what if some 20 year old Afghan asylum seeker arrived here, got picked up by somebody, turned out to be absolutely brilliant and wanted to play for England to repay us for offering him a home. Would you tell him to bugger off and play for Afghanistan?

(PS - This nearly happened with a Vietnamese refugee but he got injured while at the now-defunct Lillieshall School of Excellence).

 

[Easy 10]

Obviously we can't have people like Henry as he's already played for France

I know, but I was illustrating a point. Even if Henry had mysteriously never been capped by France, I still wouldn't want him in an England shirt.

But what if some 20 year old Afghan asylum seeker arrived here, got picked up by somebody, turned out to be absolutely brilliant and wanted to play for England to repay us for offering him a home. Would you tell him to bugger off and play for Afghanistan?

Errr, yep. (Although I'd probably break it more gently to him than that ! )
Look, I don't care if the player is an absolute world-beater. If he's not English, he shouldn't be eligable. End of story.

 

[Marshy]

Get Milner in I say, gotta be worth a go.

 

[Brovion]

Errr, yep. (Although I'd probably break it more gently to him than that ! )
Look, I don't care if the player is an absolute world-beater. If he's not English, he shouldn't be eligable. End of story.

Oh dear. Well it looks like we're just going to have to agree to differ then Easy me old mucker. I'm only a quarter English myself anyway!

I'll get me boat.

 

[blue-shifted]

Leaving aside points about England fifa ranking or who in world or national football would be best in the left side of Englands midfield, I think this boils down to a choice of.............

the short term personal gain England could get by bolstering a couple of problem positions with some foreigners in our next tournament

or the long term loss of value to world football competitions by allowing nations to field players of all nationalities.

my opinion is the second one is generally way more important. Though i agree its a balancing act. People should have a certain amount of freedom to define their own nationality. Terry Butcher for example obviously never considered himself Chinese, he isn't the best example as he's obviously English by parentage which has always been allowed.

Dual nationality cases like John Barnes where there's no English parents, are more difficult. my opinion is that these should be dealt with on a case by case basis. Barnes was bought up in England and had a long term committment to stay. Very different to Edu, who's here for a job, might get a better offer somewhere else any day.

3 years isn't enough to show commitment to a particular country. It should be changed to 10ish before too many countries take advantage of it.