Quote:
Originally Posted by toretorden
Oh well, I have another question and this time, it's about football  (soccer to you crazy americans)
Football clubs "buy" players from other parts of the world. But if there's a world championship, what proportion of the players on the national team have to be from that country? Is it simply all of them or some kind of number?
Yeah, I'm a football newb  |
The short answer is all of them. It can get a bit more complicated than that though.
For instance, there's a bloke called Shola Ameobi who's played in the English youth teams, but is just as qualified to play for Nigeria because of his ancestry. American goalkeeper Brad Friedel plays for the US but, I think, can also play for Germany if he wants. Famously, half of the first, internationally successful Irish team were actually born in England and Scotland - players like John Aldridge, Paul McGrath, Ray Houghton and so on - but qualified for Ireland caps through having Irish parents or whatever.
A player only gets to choose one team to play for though. So, basically, all of a nation's representatives in a world cup have to be from the nation they're representing, in some form or another.