Originally Posted by
DannyInvincible
When he says: "For me, eligibility is not and should not be a political issue. Nor should it be a religious issue. For me, eligibility should be a football issue."
What does that even mean? Eligibility is a national identity issue because national identity is the foundation of national teams.
He also said: "The FAI correctly states that it has broken no rules in approaching young Northern Ireland players in requesting they switch allegiance to the Republic of Ireland."
This is baloney too. The FAI doesn't "request" players to switch. It's the player who makes the request. The FAI might make an enquiry and can facilitate a player's wishes, but they can't demand that he switches. I can only assume this is just further misleading and accusatory terminology employed to curry favour with hard-line NI fans.
I also thought this bit was funny: "During a recent interview, I was questioned about the issue of eligibility. Contrary to how it was reported, I did not attack the FAI, I merely responded to the questions I was asked."
He says that is if it isn't possible to attack someone in an answer to a question.
He also complains that "[t]he Irish FA invests thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of pounds in our club NI programme", but his desire to have the players' right to switch restricted until after the age of 21 would only result in the IFA having spent more money on a player whose ultimate aspiration might have been to play for the FAI, if that player does indeed end up switching after 21. Besides, the IFA receive money from the public purse; a very significant portion of that is money from the nationalist community. As a collective, we're more than happy to see players from our community declare for Ireland having been trained with our money too.
The following appears to conflict with his "cautionary" tone for potential switchers the previous week: "While it is a player's right to choose to play for the Republic of Ireland at underage level, such a decision means that another young player will have missed out on an opportunity to be part of our elite performance pathway and another player in the FAI's system will miss out on selection."
Last week, he was saying the players who switched were then pretty much abandoned by the FAI after switching and exampled Hale and Brown (despite both having been in FAI squads), but now he's purportedly trying to make an appeal for the interests of players who are already in the FAI's set-up to be considered because he's claiming they'll miss out on account of the incoming switching players. Which is it? I'm rather suspicious of this apparent concern for FAI players. It would appear to me that he is professing concern for young players in order to win sympathy for what are ultimately his own interests and those of his association. It's a bit like the old "won't somebody think of the children?" plea. Rather conveniently, O'Neill would have us believe that the best interests of young players just so happen to align with the interests of Michael O'Neill and the IFA. Hmm...
If O'Neill wishes to see limits placed on the rights of players to switch, he needs to petition FIFA. There's no point pointing the finger at the FAI. I don't think FIFA will have much sympathy with what he's saying though because it would reverse the trend whereby a right (for a dual or multi-eligible player) to switch association once by the age of 21 was introduced in 2004 and that age-cap of 21 was lifted in 2009. I don't see FIFA back-tracking on these sorts of rights in an increasingly globalised world. After all, the right to switch was to protect young players from self-interested associations.
It also must be asked, why should the IFA have some sort of exclusive claim over players aged 17-21 who are also eligible for another association? No other association enjoys such a privilege.
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