The Ireland team have been making the headlines for all the wrong reasons as players – such as Jamie O'Hara and Jermaine Pennant – attempt to bolster their flagging careers by declaring an interest in the national side. EMMET MALONEgets the views of some former managers

UNTIL SOMEBODY develops some way of looking into the hearts of footballers and seeing what country’s name is inscribed indelibly there, it seems we will have no choice but to rely on the declarations of love and loyalty they make in accordance, of course, with Fifa regulations.

As long as that is the case, however, clearly, we are going to have months like the last one here in Ireland.

Liam Lawrence’s dismissive reference this week to players like Jermaine Pennant and, by extension, Jamie O’Hara as “jugglers”, was a rare glimpse of the tensions the current system can illicit amongst the players themselves.

Pennant might argue that Lawrence, who made his own declaration a few years back on the basis of a grandfather he didn’t know, had the luxury at the time of being a long way off the English manager’s radar.

There are many who will share at least a little of the Portsmouth player’s anxiety about players whose late declarations seem little more than an increasingly desperate “come and get me” plea to the English team’s management.

Kevin Nolan’s public utterances down the years seem a particularly good example of the phenomenon.

Brian Kerr describes his own dealings with the now Newcastle midfielder as a “little bit messy” despite the apparent enthusiasm of the player’s father regarding the Dubliner’s approaches.

When push came to shove a couple of times, the player stepped back from accepting a call-up, citing injuries, although Kerr believes Sam Allardyce might have played a part behind the scenes too.

Nolan’s preference, like O’Hara’s and Pennant’s, was to play for England, which is perfectly reasonable. Having given up any hope of that coming to pass, however, he recently acknowledged he is not after all actually entitled to play for Ireland as he has to go back a generation too far to find an ancestor born on the island.

“I did try and cheat like Tony Cascarino did by going over and having 14 pints of Guinness,” he told a newspaper reporter. “Didn’t work, though.”

Giovanni Trapattoni rarely seems overly concerned when these players are mentioned to him, but he is still unlikely to have been too thrilled with Lawrence’s comments.

Whatever about Pennant, O’Hara appears to remain a target for the Italian, who may not feel his cause is being helped by the Wolves midfielder – or the likes of his team-mate Richard Stearman or Nottingham Forest’s Luke Chambers, both of whom have been approached by the FAI in recent times – feeling he is being judged critically by existing members of the squad.

The issue, though, relates not only to experienced Premier League players in their mid to late 20s but also to teenagers and other young players who are courted by associations on the one hand while, on the other, being pressured by clubs conscious of how long or often their assets might be required to be away on international duty.

Then there’s the little matter of how declaring for one country rather than another might affect their transfer value.

The under-21 Ireland squad, named by Noel King last week, illustrated the situation well. Adam Barton, a Preston North End midfielder who played for Northern Ireland in a friendly last year but declined to take part in a competitive game because it would make him ineligible for England, was included in King’s squad, while American-born Derby County striker Conor Daly, who played for both the United States and Republic of Ireland last year, was not after having apparently decided his international future lay there rather than here.

The Barton situation is bound to provoke further irritation on the part of the IFA, which has already brought its grievances in relation to the loss of players to the Republic to the Court of Arbitration for Sport where it lost a case that centred on Daniel Kearns, who is now at Dundalk.

The association points to the work it has done to become more inclusive but critics argue it still has a long way to go.

Traditionally, in any case, the Northern Ireland team has not enjoyed great support from the minority community and there continues to be a steady trickle of players, like Marc Wilson, Darron Gibson or, most recently, young Celtic winger Paul George, who prefer to play their international football down south.

The extent to which the issue can hang over an individual player, meanwhile, has been highlighted rather well by the case of James McCarthy, whose eligibility for Scotland may be ended at the Aviva Stadium this evening.

When he spoke to journalists on Thursday, “getting it over with” was one way he referred to the prospect.

The amount of pressure and abuse McCarthy has put up with down the years in order to fulfil the promise he made to his grandfather clearly puts his commitment beyond doubt, while Ciarán Clark, whose Scottish-born father Michael was brought up in Donegal while his mother comes from Leitrim, is also rather convincing about his reasons for walking out of an England underage set-up in which he was obviously highly regarded.

“It never felt right to me when I was playing for England,” he says, “because Ireland was always the country I wanted to represent. This is the natural path for me because I have come from an Irish background and spent most of my summer holidays over there when I was a kid. I loved my time in Leitrim and Donegal and it has always felt like home to me in many ways.”

It is the sort of stuff that would have been music to the ears of Kerr or Eoin Hand when they sat down to talk with players who contemplating the same decision.

“Playing for your country is supposed to be the greatest honour in the game,” says Hand who handed first caps to the likes of Cascarino, Tony Galvin and Mick Robinson. “It’s supposed to involve total commitment by the player, though.

“You have to get 11 guys who are going to do everything for you and in all probability that is more likely if the 11 are born in the country or don’t go too far down the chain rather than fellas who are advised by an agent it’s a good move because they might get some good publicity or a transfer out of it.

“When you talk with players for the first time, the attitudes vary wildly,” he says. “Séamus McDonagh virtually begged me to pick him but then it clearly all meant a great deal to him; he would get pretty angry, for instance, with people who didn’t call him Séamus (he is listed in most record books as James). But Steve McMahon just said no. He said he preferred to wait for England and I just said: “Fine, thanks very much.”

Once a player joins the squad, though, the progress of integration is swift, he says, with no sense of “them and us”. “You’re in a thing together, you’re representing your country. There was an acceptance that under a structure you were playing for Ireland and after that it was about being committed. Once a player was seen to give it everything then that was it.

“What was disappointing with Cascarino,” he continues, “was that after the brilliant career he had with Ireland he said he hadn’t been qualified just to promote a book. If you’re going to have people that cynical then the rules probably do need to be changed.”

Kerr is uncertain about the best way to proceed but is somewhat bemused by the Barton case. “I can’t say that I have a hard and fast take on it but maybe it has become a bit too loose when people seem to be becoming confused about their nationality.

“It doesn’t sit right or sound right sometimes but your role as a manager is to put out the best team that you can, to be as competitive as you can and we do choose from a small pool.

“The question of how committed players are is important. If you look at someone like Kevin Kilbane then I don’t think there would be any question about him playing, but there have been some others who you wouldn’t have been so sure about.

“I always said that if you were going to pick someone who wasn’t born here then they had to be better than the player who had been. If the balance goes wrong then you do risk losing something from the team.”

That obligation to do what’s best for the team is an important factor, though, he insists, recalling the effort he made to get Jonathan Macken to declare for Ireland.

“I didn’t think he was exceptional,” he says, “but he did have qualities that we were short on. I wish a few fellas would declare for the Faroes,” he continues with a laugh, “but they’re very strict about giving out passports up there. I’ve tried to explain to them how difficult it is when we’re competing against countries with far bigger populations who are then recruiting from outside but they’re strict and they won’t make any exceptions on the basis that someone’s good at football.”

Amongst the cases he cites is that of a Romanian-born midfielder who has been playing on the islands for almost a decade, far longer than Fifa require if only he could gain citizenship.

The issue, though, is without doubt a universal one.

The current edition of World Soccer, indeed, lists what it regards as the game’s top six “nationality switchers”, a chart that includes Kevin-Prince Boateng, who parted company with Germany after being voted out of an under-21 squad by his team-mates and now plays for Ghana, while his brother, Jerome, stayed behind; Roberto Colautti, an Argentinean whose Israeli citizenship was rushed through so he could line out for the country, and Sebastian Soria a 27-year-old from Uruguay who admits he couldn’t pick Qatar out on a map when he was approached to move there but who now plays his international football for the country.

Rather more illuminating, perhaps, is the news that the “Paraguayan Messi,” is now playing, like the original of the species, for Argentina.

Nobody disputes the right of Juan Manuel Iturbe to play for the South American giants, after all he was born in Buenos Aires, but to Paraguayan parents, economic migrants who returned to Asuncion where their son was raised from an early age.

Iturbe even played senior international football for Paraguay at the age of 16 but it was in a friendly game and when the Argentineans came calling he agreed to switch and subsequently represented the land of his birth at the Under-20 South American championships.

When asked about the possibility of switching back, he ruled it out, observing not that he didn’t feel Paraguayan but that such a move would be “a step backwards”.

Old football habits die hard

THE PRACTICE of players born outside a country representing it in football is as old as the international game itself.

The whole concept was “eligibility” was loose to start with and teams “representing” countries that were then colonies would routinely have been made up of players from the colonial power in the late 19th and early 20th century.

Over time the whole thing became rather more complicated but the movement of people between any countries based on particular economic or political relations has generally resulted in players born in one country ending up wearing the colours of the other.

The Uruguay team that won the first ever World Cup final in 1930 included two Spanish-born players – Lorenzo Fernandez and Pedo Cea – while the victorious Italian squad four years later had three Argentineans.

Current Italy international Thiago Motta, who played for Brazil at underage level, is the 37th player born outside the country to represent the Azzurri down the years.

During the middle part of the last century it became routine for various major European powers to bolster their squads with players from their colonies.

Around half the Portuguese side that played at the 1966 World Cup, including the great Eusebio who was born in Portuguese east Africa (now Mozambique), was African while the French team variously included significant numbers of Poles, Algerians and many assorted others.

The English traditionally played fewer players born outside their borders than some of their rivals although quite a few – like John Barnes, Terry Butcher and Owen Hargreaves – have been selected over the years.

What the English did do in some cases, however, was dominate other national teams and and even as late as 1965 the Australia team that played North Korea for a place at the World Cup in England the following year was English.

More recently, the French and Germans squads have been hailed as great symbols of multiculturalism in those countries.

Four of the French squad that lifted the World Cup in Paris in 1998 – including Patrick Vieira, Marcel Desailly and Lillian Thuram – were born in Africa or French territories, while a string of other squad members had strong links to immigrant communities.

Zinedine Zidane was born in Marseille to Algerian parents, while Robert Pires was born in Reims to a Spanish mother and a Portuguese father.

The most recent rule change in this area, though, (the abolition of age restrictions on “the acquisition of a new nationality,” in 2009) was pushed for by North African countries wanting to select players capped by the French at under-21 level but then discarded. Most of the six players who made their debut for Algeria in Dublin last year fell into this category.

Long and distinguished list

THE ERA of second and third generation Irish players representing the Republic of Ireland started with Shay Brennan, Charlie Gallagher and John Dempsey, born during the late 30s and 40s in Manchester, Glasgow and London respectively, the latter to a father from Waterford and a mother from Kildare.

Brennan came first, making his debut in 1965 against Spain but the notion of “qualifying” gradually took hold.

A few years later, in 1973, London-born Terry Mancini learned from club-mate Don Givens his Irish mother entitled him to play for the Republic. He spoke recently of the pride he felt upon getting the opportunity to do so although, famously, he had never heard Amhrán na bhFiann prior to lining out for his debut against Poland at Dalymount park in October 1973.

As he subsequently recalled: “The music started playing and it went on and on and I turned to Don Givens and said “for f**k sake, their national anthem don’t half go on,” and he said ‘That’s ours, Terry’. I didn’t have a clue.”

Mancini went on to earn just four more caps but many of the players that followed have enjoyed long and impressive international careers. Indeed three of the country’s eight most capped players – Paul McGrath, Tony Cascarino and current team member Kevin Kilbane – were born in England as were two of the top six goal scorers, Carcarino and John Aldridge.

Many of the country’s best and most celebrated or popular players down the years, the likes of Ray Houghton, Andy Townsend, Mark Lawrenson, Mick McCarthy and Dave O’Leary are included in the list.

A sense of Irishness, no matter how remote it might have been initially in some cases, helped bond people together at clubs and so the interest or eligibility of some was flagged by others. Aldridge told Jack Charlton about Houghton; Alan Kelly apparently tipped John Giles off about Mark Lawrenson and Mick McCarthy, by then manager of Sunderland, nudged Liam Lawrence forward.

Quite a few got away as well, though. Martin Keown recently explained he had felt deterred from declaring for Ireland despite being brought up keenly aware of his origins, in part by his father’s desire that he and the family not stand out too much as Irish during what were troubled times for the community in Britain. Legend has it Kevin Keegan faxed the FAI expressing his interest but got no reply, while Wayne Rooney, Paul Gascoigne and Rio Ferdinand are just some of the other British born players who “qualified” to represent Ireland.

The position regarding players from the North has evolved greatly over the course of the 90 years since the Irish game was partitioned but in recent time a significant number of players – including Darron Gibson and Marc Wilson – have opted to play for the Republic and the IFA continues to be unhappy about the rules.

The Fifa Rules . . .

THE rules governing a person’s eligibility to play international football as well as his/her entitlement to switch their international allegiance are contained in Fifa’s statutes (numbers 15-18).

The starting point is that any person who holds the nationality of a country on a basis other than residency, is entitled to play football for that country. Where residency is involved Fifa has laid down time frames of its own in order to prevent abuses.

Where players might be entitled to represent more than one country, Fifa specifies that the player must have been born on the territory of the country that they wish to represent, that they have one parent/ grandparent who was born on the territory or that they have lived there for at least two years.

This is, in effect, the so called “granny rule”.

Players may switch between the teams for which they are qualified as long as the games are not part of a competition but once he or she has played in any game that is part of a Fifa recognised competition (at any age level bar senior) they may apply to “acquire a new nationality” just once.

Once they have played a senior game in a recognised Fifa competition a switch generally becomes impossible although there are exceptions relating to the involuntary loss of nationality.

In relation to Ireland, a case brought to the Court of Arbitration for Sport by the IFA aimed at preventing players born in Northern Ireland from being free to declare for the Republic on the basis of their entitlement to dual nationality was rejected last year.