representing scotland

[CHRISTOF]

guys what's yer view on this boy from somalia representing scotland????new rules say he can because he has stayed here for seven years and has been educated here apparantly he is very good!i think we should stick with the grandparents rule even if scotland cant produce good players anymore

[ruudvandan]

I'm half English half Irish, and the way I look at it is this... when I was growing up the only international team I dreamt about playing for was England, never Ireland. Sure I always wanted Ireland to do well, but I supported England.

If this lad has grown up as a Scot and dreamt about playing for Scotland and he would support Scotland in a match against Somalia, then I don't see it as a problem.

As for the Scots producing players, well they produced this guy, he's come through the ranks at Celtic, it's not as if they went and poached him from a Somali club.

[cad]

Countries like Portugal, France Switzerland have been doing this for years.

Because of dual passports a good percentage of the Portugese team's best players were born and brought up in Brazil. Same goes with most countries..France have similar rules with old French colonies in Africa.

Germany have a few Poles playing for them too.

The British teams have never went down this route (with the exeption of a couple of players eg Barnes playing for England but born in Jamaica) so it's becoming big news here.

We are only now catching up with continental thinking.

[opsmonkey]

so basically CHRISTOF your saying you don’t want a decent footballer playing for you because he has only lived in Scotland for 7 years and been educated there so will, in essence, be Scottish in his thinking and application of taught thought processes..

but you will take someone who's granddad was Scottish and has never set foot in Scotland nor has any idea of the culture or the country as he wasn’t educated there..

[CHRISTOF]

good points guys maybe im being too patriotic i have been told im getting 2 worked up about it

[jim56]

Other countries use this rule so why not us? It's not like we have an abundance of half decent players to pick from.

jim