Tragic Football Stories - Let us Kick Around the misshapen Jabulani that is English football right here

Blackpool's Matthew Gilks should have waited a couple of days before declaring himself to be Scottish.

i warmed to hart when i read that his real name is charles. also he looks like a bizarre perfect cross between spike and angel from buffy.

capello really does deserve all the donkey ears going for the goalie sitch though, it's ridiculous - stop acting like there's some big england cantera fam idea and just call up steve harper/lee camp/andy lonergan or whatever.

Oli Kay tweeting about some breaking news regarding Arteta/England, but you need a Times Online subscription to read it. Any idea what it is?

guessing he's applied for citizenship?

I guess so. He said it's "worth scaling that paywall for".

heh is that a woy pronounciation of payroll?

you need a times subscription to read their tweets? wow if ever there was a reason it wasn't worth it.

sorry, worded that badly. he posted a link to the story on the times website, which you need to pay for to read. tweets are free.

The story is that he's ineligible all along because he represented Spain at junior level, and didn't hold a uk passport at the time.

is the FA's view anyway, so liable to be overturned pronto in the unlikely event of politicians/tabloids/redknapps sticking up for carpetbagging foreign scum

someone shd have a tête-à-tiny tet' w/ him

lol 'represented them at junior level' hasn't stopped this working for plenty other players?

I think the only thing preventing this is the gentleman's agreement between the home nations not to exploit the residency rule for non-UK nationals. Under the current FIFA/UEFA rules Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland are all entitled to select Arteta but have agreed not to. I can't quite work out the reason for this but I think we should stop being gentlemen and give Arteta a CU Jimmy bunnet asap.

This comes frequently in Scotland because we're mostly shit and players like Nacho Novo and Lorenzo Amoruso would make Scotland a better team - meaning it gets press up here quite often. I think this is the first time a foreigner without granny credentials has been good enough for England selection since this ruling came in (apart from with John Barnes when they just broke the rules, that is).

Well I for one couldn't stomach the thought of anyone but the purest Hibernian representing my country tbh. The notion is quite distasteful to me.

Deek's played for Scotland already so no chance there.

Did they not try to get lolmunia at one stage? I agree we should get first dibs on Arteta because he started up here first. I would have thought trying to nab a keeper would be a priority now, no?

(I'm now off to cry at the truthbomb that Nacho Novo would make Scotland better. It's true, but I really don't want it to be)

xposts lol @ aldo

tbh Mark Yardley would probably make Scotland better, ever now.

ever=even

You mean you're not ecstatic at the return of the prodigal Fat Gaz to the Scotland squad then?

Been away, missed that. Is his return through choice or fat(e)?

Maybe leave it up to Arteta to decide which one he wants to play for?

I don't get this agreement at all, who's supposed to benefit from it? It seems like another excuse for failing against barbarians to be clinging to it now, like refusing to take penalties, or not going to the world cup because you finished runners-up in qualifying, or not sending a team to your own olympics

Is it to stop cradlesnatching within the home countries?

Probably - but then Nigel Quashie et al have been playing for Scotland in recent years. Maybe it's to protect England from Scholes and Owen making the same choice. That doesn't really applies to Arteta anyway, though.

lets us nick anyone we want which is all good.

just don't have 4 teams for one country.

war of conquest over shay given

WTF

Nigel Quashie has a Scottish granddad though - to play for Scotland, you have to have no more than a second generation link to Scotland. It's not like at present we're hoovering up all random Englishers who can't get a game, just the ones with Scottish grannies (you do all know that Craig Levein contacted every agent in the UK and asked them to check the lineage of all their clients just in case they had a Scottish granny and fancied a game, hence Matt Gilks?).

Not sure what, if any, precedent a nationalised British citizen with no parental or grandparental links to any of the home nations would have on this current set-up.

xpost, haha, not surprised Andy Roxburgh was involved in that. Learning a lot without it actually being any use was kind of his thing.

England's outstanding player not exactly high praise

I knew that Quashie qualified (plus loads of others since I think), I just assumed the 'no Arteta' rule had some wider aspect to it. If the only thinking behind it is to stop guys like Arteta, well what's the point of that?

England's outstanding player not exactly high praise

Inclusion for Rooney in the top 3 is far too high, however.

would have picked lennon upson and terry

forgot rob green!

Presume is just in case every Britisher player ever fails to get caps because of all these pesky foreigners coming in and stealing their jobs? I notice that rugby and cricket don't care quite so much.

xposts

it's to avoid our country becoming a laughing stock innit

it's to avoid our country becoming 4 separate laughing stocks innit

http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01122/MANAGERSPLASH_1122899a.jpg

That will have the rest of the world quaking in their boots with mirth

Big Sam's first press conference as England boss in two years' time: "it's time to get back to old-fashioned English virtues, no disrespect to Mr Capello but he's not English and he doesn't understand blah blah..."

he doesn't understand strong defending, he's italian!

fuck all that continental franco baresi 'defending', we need to get back to basics gary cahill defending.

really surprised at the lack of fuss over the best coach ye could have leaving.

tho he did have a shit WC i suppose.

he did shit to be fair. i honestly think harry is the man for the job. the players prob are pig ignorant enough that they favour an english boss...

the players prob are pig ignorant enough that they favour an english boss...

Not many of them play under one... apart from 'Arry

I can see an argument for saying that if the players must have English nationality then the coach shd. I don't think I agree but it's iffy.

I'll be happy enough with an English coach cos it'll be one less bullshit excuse for continued failure and whoever gets the job will probably be due for a kick in the hubris.

yeah i did think of that when i was writing it tom, but like, i dunno, for the weird way that job works i can see how maybe an english coach, no language barrier, etc, might be a better idea, motivation seems like the biggest part of it when you see the players so rarely.

anyone think trapp would have done a better job than capello? gotta say his motivational/organisational talent shines through hugely, if his tactics are v dull.

Capello is too good to have to put up with these cunts.

quite

cunts = the f.a., players, jingoist media, english managers, fans etc etc

yeah capello's international record is second to none to be fair, unlike the players.