The Footballers That Switched Nationality to Play for a Different Country

Playing for your country is considered one of the highest honours that a footballer can achieve during their career. Entertaining thousands and winning trophies for a club side is nice but there is something extra special in carrying the hopes and dreams of an entire population.

For many footballers, the dream of representing their country began at a very early age. Whether it’s pretending to score the winning goal in the back garden or sleeping in football pyjamas, kids tend to make and show their allegiances early on. It’s not always so simple, however.

More so than ever, people move around the globe and children are born in different nations to their parents and grandparents. Nationality is a complex issue and identity even more so. There are countless examples of players having to decide which country they should play for. Each of those players has made a deeply personal decision but such a decision is also an administrative process.

FIFA and the other governing bodies in football have strict rules that set down the conditions about when a player can represent more than one international team. In this article, we take an in depth look into the applicable rules, discuss why players would want to change their international allegiance and pick out 10 high profile examples of players who have represented two or more national teams.

What Are the Rules?

As the overarching governing body of world football, it’s FIFA who are in charge of the rules regarding international representation. Collectively known as the eligibility rules, the criteria were comprehensively updated in 2021. The effect of these updates was, generally, to make it possible for players to switch their allegiance who otherwise wouldn’t be able to. This does not mean that it is easy for footballers to play for more than one country, however. Let’s have a look at the specific rules and clauses that are applicable and how things have changed over time.

The Early Days

In the earliest days of Association Football and of FIFA things were relatively simple. The principle was that eligibility for international football would follow a player’s legal nationality. The complicating factor is that legal nationality can be changeable. Any footballer who emigrated to a different country to that of their birth and stayed long enough to receive citizenship and/or have their legal nationality change would be able to play for their adopted country. This was the case with some very high profile players, such as legendry real Madrid duo, Alfred Di Stéfano (who represented both Argentina and Spain) and Ferenc Puskás (who represented both Hungary and Spain).

While most people were happy enough with this system, there were some glaring problems that needed to be sorted. First, international football should be a different beast to domestic football. We all know that loyalty is a rare thing in club football, especially these days, with players and clubs always looking out for themselves. International football is a very different beast, so it cannot be right that players change their allegiances time and time again in order to best serve themselves.

Second, recognised FIFA associations do not always tally with nation states as recognised by the United Nations. Take the United Kingdom as an example. It is one country but with four different football associations. Then there are nation states with different ethnic groups or areas which complicates things in terms of who players wish to represent. Kosovo is a good example of this. For years, footballers who would want to play for Kosovo were unable to as the nation did not have an officially recognised international team.

2004 – Major Changes

FIFA attempted to address the problems with their eligibility criteria with the introduction of a new set of rules in January, 2004. These new rules were seen as a radical overhaul of the system but were themselves altered again just a few months later. The first draft of rules aimed to offer footballers some leeway as youngsters, whilst ensuring that they would have to stick to their guns in senior football. Specifically, FIFA allowed footballers to represent one country at youth team level and then another as a senior international. The only caveat was that players had to signal their intention to switch their allegiance before their 21st birthday.

Footballers who had the option to represent multiple nations broadly welcomed the new rules. It was only a matter of months before players began playing for one international team despite playing their youth team football for another nation. However, there was an unintended consequence of the new rules which forced a change. Some ambitious football associations who didn’t have the amount of talent that they wanted began to exploit the rules by naturalising players from other nations to boost their numbers. Perhaps the most infamous example of this is Qatar.

Qatar is a rich country in terms of money but it is not rich in terms of football history or population size. This was a problem for the country’s rulers who craved the legitimacy that football provides when competing at the top level of international football – and even hosting the World Cup (something that was pretty much unimaginable in 2004). Thus, Qatari scouts travelled throughout South America and Africa to find talented young players and make generous offers to their families to ensure they took up the offer of naturalisation. These offers were made to young footballers even if they had no links to Qatar.

FIFA tried to take action against this practice (which was, to be fair, also implemented by other countries than Qatar) by adding a requirement for players to have what they called “a clear connection” to their proposed new national team. Specifically, players had to have at least one parent or grandparent who was born in the country they wished to play for, or they themselves needed to be resident in that country for a minimum of two years (later extended to five years).

The amendments were necessary but still did not have the effect that FIFA wanted. In 2007, then FIFA president, Sepp Blatter, was quoted talking about “invaders from Brazil towards Europe, Asia and Africa” and suggested that the majority of teams playing in the World Cup would be made up of naturalised Brazilians, a nation with an abundance of football talent among its huge population.

2020 – Further Changes Announced

Despite the various loopholes and rules that could be bent post 2004, there was one hard and fast rule that international teams and players could not get around. Once a footballer played a competitive international match for one national team that was the only country that they could represent for the rest of their professional careers.

This rule did not apply to friendly matches. It was not uncommon for a player to represent one international team in a friendly and then go on to commit to another. We saw it with Diego Costa, who played for Brazil twice before switching allegiance to Spain. More recently, we saw it with Declan Rice, who represented the Republic of Ireland three times, but made himself unavailable for selection when Ireland manager, Mick McCarthy, tried to call him up for a competitive fixture. After much reported agonising, Rice ultimately chose to play for England.

Rice wouldn’t have had to keep Ireland waiting had FIFA’s new rule changes come in just a couple of years earlier. As of 2021, players are able to switch their allegiance even if they’ve played a maximum of three competitive matches for a different nation, providing they are under the age of 21 and qualify to play for the new nation under FIFA eligibility rules. However, this rule does not apply if the player represented their first national team at the World Cup or European Championship, Copa America, or other such championship.

The new rules also changed things for players who become naturalised in another country. Footballers are now able to play for their adopted country even if they have represented another nation at youth level, providing they have lived in their new home country for at least five years or are otherwise eligible (through ancestry for example). The number of years required is reduced to three for players who moved to a new country before the age of 10. As you can see, things are rather complex with different scenarios catered for in slightly different ways.

Why Do Players Switch Allegiance?

Identity is an incredibly complex issue for anybody, let alone high-class footballers who are trying to decide who to play for. Players have to consider a whole host of different factors from what will best for their careers to how to honour their parents and grandparents. Let’s look at some of the most common and important reasons why players make this huge decision.

Common Nationality

As noted earlier, FIFA associations don’t exactly tally with nation states as defined by the United Nations. Although FIFA is generally happy to stick to its own rules it does recognise that 25 of its member organisations share a common nationality with at least one other.

The most obvious example of this is a footballer with British nationality. Providing the circumstances allow, British nationals are able to represent 11 different national teams – Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, England, Gibraltar, Montserrat, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Turks and Caicos Islands, and Wales.

If players have a familial link with the new common nation that they wish to represent they are able to do so with no fuss. Additionally, FIFA allows for players to make a switch without such links providing they have been resident in their new nation for a minimum of five years.

Things are – predictably – complicated even further in Britain. In 1993 an agreement by the Football Association, Scottish Football Association, Football Association of Wales and Irish Football Association stated: “Where [a] player, both natural parents, and both natural grandparents are born outside the UK, but the player is the holder of a current British passport, he may play for the country of his choice.” This meant a naturalised British citizen could choose to play for Wales, for example, wherever in the UK they live. In practice, the four associations were not comfortable with this arrangement though and, in 2009, a residency clause was added which required players to live in the country they wanted to represent for at least two years.

The Chance of Glory

Cliché it may well be but when footballers say that a career in the professional game is a short one they aren’t wrong. Every young footballer signing their first professional contract dreams that one day they’ll be part of a team that wins major honours and the best way of doing that is playing for the best team possible.

This is true of international football just as much as domestic football. And so players who are good enough, who also have a choice of teams to represent, will often pick the one that gives them the best chance of glory.

The French national team is a good example of this. A high proportion of Les Bleus players have parents or grandparents who came to France as immigrants. This gives their highly talented offspring a choice of two or more national teams to represent. As much as choosing a team is a deeply personal matter, picking a nation who have won the World Cup twice in recent times is clearly a positive to players’ chances of major international success.

Glory Through Simply Playing International Football

Whilst the best players may choose to play for a nation they feel less strongly about as it gives them more chance of winning things, this also works in the opposite way in a sense. There are many footballers who may have been born in England, for example, and feel very English, but who have ended up playing for another country. If it becomes apparent that they won’t quite make the grade to represent the Three Lions, or they simply keep be overlooked as each squad is announced, a rival FA may make an approach.

Perhaps the player’s parents were born in Nigeria, or Jamaica (or anywhere else) and so the player is approached by the authorities from one of these nations. Accepting that their chances of playing for England have passed, or at best are very remote, they may choose to play for the nation of their parents (or grandparents), simply for the chance to play international football at all, and possibly get to a World Cup or other major tournament.

Outside Pressure

Football at the top level is incredibly competitive. This is true of international football as much as it is of domestic football. So, just as scouts, coaches and agents work very hard to convince promising young players to join their club, the same pressure is applied to young players who have yet to play a competitive international match. This sort of pressure is particularly evident in Britain. England has long been the dominant footballing force in the British Isles and so the best young talent from Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland is often targeted by the FA.

Gareth Bale is a good example of this. It was always going to be a tough sell for the English FA because Bale played for Wales at various levels of youth football as well as competing in national schools’ football. However, he was repeatedly asked whether he would play for England, especially when he moved to Southampton as a 16-year-old. This is because he qualified to play for England via his grandmother. Still, Bale held firm under the pressure to play for England and went on to captain Wales, becoming arguably the country’s greatest ever player.

Honouring Heritage

Several recent World Cup winners had the option to represent a nation other than the one they tasted glory with. At the same time, many other players have taken a different decision, choosing instead to honour the country of their parents and/or grandparents. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is one of the most well-known examples of this. He was born and raised in France and was certainly good enough to have earned many caps for his country of birth. He also had a Spanish passport and was invited to play for Italy Under 19s as well, after the Italian FA noticed his qualities. However, the former Arsenal, Borussia Dortmund and Barcelona striker decided to play for Gabon instead.

Aubameyang wanted to represent the African nation largely because his father, who was born and raised in Gabon, had done so himself and even captained his nation. Moreover, Aubameyang Jr had two brothers, Willy and Catilina, who also played international football for Gabon. Despite potentially missing out on silverware, Aubameyang is happy to go down as the best player ever to represent Gabon.

10 High Profile Players Who Played for More Than One Country

We’ve looked at the rules governing player eligibility and discussed why a player might want to choose one national team over another so now it’s time to pick out 10 of the most famous examples of players who played international football for more than one team.