Surely this is beyond the pale for supporter's groups? Am I right, Tim Hartley, chairman of the supporters' trust?
I'd be concerned as well, your Lordship - that said, how independent from the club is the Cardiff Supporters' Trust? I ask because the Hull City OSC has been utterly toothless during our recent fun and games, and seems more concerned with maintaining a cosy relationship with the club rather than questioning what's going on.
On that note,
a little update on recent efforts.
Interested to hear opinions on the Jack Wilshire comments on England eligibility?
Speaking as an American, I'm fine with any citizen of this country playing for us - regardless of whether they were born here, play here or live here. But we are largely a nation of immigrants. Obviously the culture is different in much of Europe. But pretty much every top international team has at least one or two members with recent immigrant ancestry.
In general, I don't see it being a big issue. Of course, with England, Scotland and Wales the waters are muddied somewhat as you can't legally be a citizen of those countries - we're all classed as British so we have some separate agreements in place between us to settle certain issues of eligibility.
I suppose we'd all like to see national teams made up entirely of players born within their country's borders because that's basically the original idea of such matches, but the world is a more complex place than that and many people have dual nationalities or long periods of residency in other countries so this has to be taken into account. As long as an individual has a legitimate claim, it's a decision for them and the national FA in question to make.
That said, while I have no issue with an individual born in country X playing for country Y because he moved to the latter as a child and has spent most of his life there (as with Zaha and Sterling), I think it is stretching it a bit if a player chooses to play for a country he's moved to in later life purely for the purposes of playing football. It must be remembered though that at no point has Adnan Januzaj given any indication that that's his intent.
For what it's worth, I'm sure that Januzaj has no intention of playing for England - he's turned an increasingly strong-looking Belgium down on a couple of occasions, and reading between the lines it seems his preference would be to turn out for Kosovo. However, they're not currently recognised by FIFA so eventually he may turn to Albania who he's apparently expressed an interest in.
Unless of course he's just stalling and planning on stringing everyone along for the next five years until he qualifies to play for England. Because, you know, it's
England.
