The Football Thread - 17/18 Season

[Scisca]

Ka-pi96 said:

Scisca said:

I know the historical reasons, but still think this is humiliating, when you get teams with only 2-3 players who genuinely represent their nation. I wouldn't mind if it was one or two guys here or there, like you have in Italy for example. But when you barely have someone from your nation on the team? That's ridiculous. And don't pull that bullshit racism card. I'm complaining about black players and Arabs playing in European teams just like I'm complaining about half of Austrian team consisting of Yugoslavian players. It's not about race, it's about nation. It just happens so, that European nations are nations of white people, but by no means am I limiting this rant just to different races

PS. Don't generalize, not all white nations were involved in colonization and slavery, so putting the blame for that on all white people is unjustified.

PPS. GO IRELAND!! Take yet another favourite down.

Well that's the problem. Not all people think that way.

It's a fact, it doesn't matter what you think about it. Also, citizenship is fluid, nationality isn't.

Slimebeast said:

Well, let's see. I know you want to bait me, but here you go, the members of the foreign legion:
Sagna
Rami
Evra
Kante
Pogba
Payet

Notes:

Sagna "At age 17 Sagna wished to join up with the Senegalese national team, stating, "I wanted to play for Senegal when I was 17, but they didn't reply"
Rami at the age of 23: "Adil Rami has told he still remains available to play for Morocco as well"
Kante said this in 2015: "Although Kante previously rejected Mali, but he also suggested he would play for Mali in the future."
Pogba, apparently his two brothers play for Guinea, but Pogba was so good so he chose France.

Matuidi a few years ago rejected an offer from Angola's national team "because I am deeply proud to be a full French" - that I like! So I see him as French.

Payet I'm a little unsure wether the island he was born on belongs to France or not.
 
Apparently, Polands football association tried to recruit Koscielny because he had a Polish grandfather. Born in France, doesn't speak Polish, but 1/4th of his blood is Polish. Now that's farfetched! I'm totally against that. That was in 2010 and according to Scisca Poland has changed its policy since then.

@Kościelny - To me if you have Polish blood, you can play for the national team. When it comes to national teams, I follow the law of blood - ius sangre. I think that nobody can deny a player the right to play for a country that is his natural blood heritage. People of mixed blood get the extra benefit here, obviously. Still, I can ease your mind, that our policy was still evolving at that point. We went from having a Nigerian born player with our citizenship on the team to only allowing foreign born players with Polish ancestors, but recently we went further and only allow those players born abroad, who have Polish ancestry and speak fluent Polish. That's why Obraniak (born in France) is no longer on the team, despite being a good player. When we first called him, we only demanded him to learn and sing the national anthem. Now we have a rule of no translators in the locker room (considering our language is very difficult and only spoken in our country - this is a harsh rule) - as a result we stopped calling two decent players, who were our starters, but we don't regret it. The team feels more "our" this way. That's why on this Euro, the only guy who was born outside of Poland is Thiago Cionek, born in Brazil, his grandparents fled Poland during the World War, but he speaks fluent Polish (spoke it before he came back to Poland, as he identified himself as part of the Brasilian Polonia) and has lived in Poland for quite some time. I'm not sure if he even has Brasilian citizenship at all at this point. In this case I see nothing wrong with him playing for the Polish team.