The Granny rule...........

[Junior]

The Irish team has taken a fair bit of stick in the past for utilising this rule, when playyers have declared for ROI.

However, while watching Euro04 it seems that this is a much more common occurance in teams throughout europe.

4 of the 5 strikers named in the Germany squad were born outside of Germany, then there is Deco of Portugal who is Brazilian born.

Is Owen Hargreaves Canadian born??

I'm sure there are plenty more - anyone got any others/views on this?

[tetsujin1979]

Yep Hargreaves is Canandian, with English parents and could have declared for Germany, after living there for most of his life.

Pretty sure Christian Vieri was born in Austrailia, think I heard his brother declared for them, which will at some point lead to the pub quiz question "which brother played on opposing soccer teams at international level"?

[drinkfeckarse]

Camoranesi? in the Italian squad is Argentinian by birth and of course half the Dutch squad were born in Surinam!

[yur man]

viera is from senegal

zidane was born in france but of algerian parents so couldve declared for them

i heard chriatian vieri interviewed once and he had this ozzie accent, it was mad. recently i saw him again on tele and he talks now with the italian accent. must be doin it for the ladies

[lopez]

Desaiilly is from Ghana. Some other Italian was mentioned as being born in Manchester. Mostovoi is from one of the Baltic states. Croatia must have some plastics. And then there is the rank hypocracy of the Germans. Nein, du kanst have a passport even though you and your Turkish father vas born hier. Vas, du ist ein very gut fussballer? Vy didn't du say?

There all at it, although to be fair I've only heard one country slag us off for it and their cricket team used to be nothing but foreigners.

[Sheridan]

The big difference here, of course, is that almost all of these people play or played their club football in the country of the national team they represent, and therefore belong to that footballing culture. Ireland is one of only a handful of countries where this process operates in reverse (Senegal and Palestine being further examples.)

Germany's Kevin Kuranyi is an interesting one. He has one Norwegian great-grandfather, one Hungarian grandfather (hence the Hungarian surname), a French-born German father and a Panamanian mother. He was brought up in Brazil until the age of 15, when his dad sent him to live with an Italian family in Stuttgart in order to learn the footballing trade.