It seems to me that a system designed to avoid abuse is being used in an abusive way itself, and needs to be overhauled because of unintended consequences.
IIRC, a lot of the impetus for allowing switches of nationality came because, amongst others but principally, France were single-capping promising youngsters eligible for African countries in friendlies. The change allowed players who were subsequently never called up again to escape from being cap-tied, and put an end to cynical and strategic call-ups. Rightly so.
What we have here, however, is a young player who has appeared
three times in a single season and for whom
not being called into the next squad would have been controversial and unexpected. There is no question of his having being discarded, or of the caps he has won being exploitative: he has graduated from being an under-age international to a senior one seamlessly, along a path that is entirely normal.
He has had his head turned. It seems no more complicated than that. If this was a club versus club situation, we’d call it tapping up. It’s not allowed in club football: it shouldn’t be allowed in international.
The rules need to be rebalanced and at the very least, there needs to be
- a minimum period after the last cap has been won (perhaps a full calendar year); and/or
- a minimum number of squads for which a player has not been called up for which they were fit and available (perhaps 5 to 7); and
- a set number of caps, even if all friendlies, within a given period (perhaps 3 to 5 over 1 to 2 calendar years) at or above which a switch cannot be made because the nation has demonstrated a reasonable commitment to the player
to prevent players, their clubs and agents cynically exploiting a loop hole.
I’ll be honest, I think O’Neill has been far too soft too many times and I’m mad as hell with him. Whatever about Kelly and Grealish they weren’t senior players (though we may yet regret his softly softly approach), and Alex Bruce and Sean Scannell were never likely to make another squad. O’Neill needed to show some balls in this case and protect the integrity of the squad: call Rice up and force both his and Southgate’s hand. The more he lets prospects pull out with no consequences the more it’s going to keep happening.