Originally Posted by
EalingGreen
P.S. All of the above relies on a purely rational and literal interpretation of what it states in the relevant FIFA Articles (plus the official Irish Government guidelines on Nationality). The only example to date which seems to contradict such an interpretation is that of Alex Bruce in 2006. I can conceive of two possible explanations as to how/why he was deemed eligible.
First, there may be something additional in his ancestry etc which is not widely known, such as (Geysir's) step-father link in the Paul Butler case.
Alternatively, iirc the IFA did not make a Test Case out of Bruce in the same way as they subsequently did with Gibson or Kearns. Therefore it is possible that nobody at FIFA looked too closely at Bruce's particular case. Which may sound unlikely, except that it took a wave of protests by other African Associations to alert FIFA to the fact that both Qatar and Cape Verde were preparing to confer nationality on some second-rate Brazilian players etc. Moreover, I have seen it reported that there are eg Kosovans playing for Albania, or Japanese playing for North Korea, whose eligibility would not bear close scrutiny, should eg Serbia or Japan/S.Korea lodge an official protest.