Brazilian footballers/ Nationalities of the Eircom League/LoI

[Quack]

How many nationalities have been represented in the LoI/eL?

Of the top of my head:

Ireland
Scotland
England.
France
Uganda
Ukraine
Trinidad and Tobago
Barbados
USA


Wales? (I presume so, but no one springs to mind)

This is inspired by reading Alex Bellos' "Futebol the Brazilian Way of Life" which is very good. There's a chapter on the "Brazilian footballer" phenomenon - any Brazilian with a pair of legs and a silly nickname is treated with superstitious reverence - thus the Brazilian footballer is a lucrative export market. In the book, Bellos visits the Faroes, where some Brazilians were exported with varying success; a couple were OK, although one was completely useless but good at gutting fish (the owner of the club was also the fish factory owner) and married a local girl. Naturally rather dodgy agents are responsible for hawking these guys around the world.

But there haven't been any Brazilians plying their wares here. As far as I know... or any South Americans at all?

[Neil]

I think there was a Brazilian playing for Derry City back in their glory days of around 1988. Was his name Da Gama?

[joe]

there was a piece on this topic in the city programme a few weeks back. i'll see if i can root it out later on

[De Town]

Steve Williams from Shels is from Wales

[pineapple stu]

Tony Bird is Welsh too.

Nigerian lad playing for Harps.

Jason Kabia is Finnish??

Obviously loads of Northern Irish players too.

Cork had some Bosnian? Saw that on the Cork forum somewhere.

Harry McKop for Shels was Zimbabwean.

Was it Owen Da Gama played for Derry?

Alek Ludzic was of Polish origin.

[pineapple stu]

From the eircom League yearbook 2001/02 -

South Africa - Alan Koch (3 games for Limerick)
Holland - Carel van der Velden (Shels), Eddie van Boxtel (Dundalk, Bray, Monaghan and others), Raimond Roos (Kilkenny)
Hong Kong - Davy Williamson (Bohs, Bray)
Bohs' New Zealand contingent (Jason Batty (now the national team's keeper), Harry Ngata, Gavin Wilkinson)
Kosovo (which country is that in?? Part of the old Yugoslavia anyway) - Kemajl Avdiu (Harps), Alban Hysa (Dublin City)
Italy - Ricardo Neapolitino (St Francis - goalkeeper who had been with Torino when he was younger! Managed four games for Francis...)
St Vincent and the Grenadines - Wes Charles (Bray)
Australia - Gavin Lee (St Francis)
Portugal - Carlos Rocha (Kilkenny)
Suriname - Michael Zaalman (Sligo)

And if you want to go to under-21 level, what about Mullingar Town?! Sudan, Brazil, Nigeria and loads more!

[UCD_4_Life]

Wasn't that bald lad who played for Dundalk and Shels Yugoslavian?

I can't remember his name, he scored a header against us at Belfield last season.

[eamoss]

Ghana - Baba Isaaka plays wit Dundalk

[Sheridan]

Originally posted by pineapple stu
From the eircom League yearbook 2001/02 -

Kosovo (which country is that in?? Part of the old Yugoslavia anyway)

Autonomous province of Serbia and Montenegro, I think.

Anyway, the Herald printed a list of nationalities in the eL a couple of years ago, I've got it on my PC for some reason. Interestingly, they also listed county origins, and the main thrust of the article was that more eL players came from Trinidad & Tobago (2) than Kerry (1).

Bear in mind that these figures are two years out of date and that Northern Irish players are included in the county list. And now that I look at it, I suspect the list covers only Premier Division clubs.

United Kingdom: 15
Trinidad & Tobago: 2
USA: 2
St Vincent and the Grenadines: 1
Uganda: 1
Barbados: 1
France: 1
Nigeria: 1

Irish counties:

Dublin: 118
Galway: 17
Cork: 14
Derry, Louth: 12
Wicklow: 7
Limerick: 6
Monaghan: 5
Donegal, Longford, Waterford: 4
Sligo, Tipperary, Mayo: 3
Fermanagh, Down, Offaly: 2
Kerry, Meath, Westmeath, Clare, Kilkenny: 1

[Sheridan]

Originally posted by UCD_4_Life
Wasn't that bald lad who played for Dundalk and Shels Yugoslavian?

I can't remember his name, he scored a header against us at Belfield last season.

If you mean Alex Nesovic, he was born in Bradford, according to Google. CM always listed him as English/Yugoslav, if that's any help.

[tiktok]

The brazilian who played for Derry was DaSilva.

Neal Horgan was born in the USA.
Andy Packer who was on trial for us (and played 5min) was Australian.

Pat's had a canadian full back who's name completely eludes me.
And Shels had that Maltese guy too. Jeez, i'm terrible with names.

[Sheridan]

Originally posted by tiktok
Pat's had a canadian full back who's name completely eludes me.
And Shels had that Maltese guy too. Jeez, i'm terrible with names.

The Canadian international was Jeff Clarke, who left Pat's because his national team manager threatened to exclude him if he continued to play in a supposedly weak league.

The only Malteser I can think of is Luke Dimech, who was at Shamrock Rovers. He's with Mansfield now, I think. I saw him on Football League Extra last week.

Are the New Zealanders (Bunce and Jones?) still at Drogheda? A more interesting question may be which overseas players stayed the longest at LoI clubs.

[Dodge]

In our squad at the moment we have Karim from France (Niger born), Charlie from Uganda and the two Brazilians who have just had their work permits granted. Expect Luis to be on the first team pretty soon

Oh and their was more to jeff Clarke leaving than that (we also had a Belgian keeper Dominique Wouters for three games a few years ago)

[De Town]

Bunce is at Drogheda, don't know about Jones

[MariborKev]

American's

We had Russell Payne and now have Mark Steers

[James]

dont forget the bulgarians we had in the 90's like

[Bluebeard]

The Blues had a fierce number of foreignes under Ormsby and Matthews.

Without trying at all I can recall Quitongo, who I think was Angolan, Dominique Wouters, the Belgian, Markovac was some kind of Serbian Croatian Australian chance missing hybrid, there was a bloke from Portugal then, as well as Gus di Lella lately, some guy from Birmingham who claimed Brazilian ancestry (I'll get back to you if he does get that first cap), I think Trond Debes and that other bloke were Norwegian. I am certain sure that there was someone else from way out of nowhere too, but I can't place him right now

Currently Jimmy has been looking at a Canadian, but I hear that the impending transfer deadline will rule that out.

Did the Maltese Rover di Meche head home after?

[pineapple stu]

And sure we had a few Hungarians at one stage - Zsolt Torok and Zoltan Istvan I think.

[Dr.Nightdub]

We had a keeper from Rwanda or Burundi or somewhere in central Africa for a while a couple of years ago as well.

[Dodge]

Aime Kitenge from Burundi. He didn't play though, likewise George Miller from Liberia (think he was with Linfield for a good while)