Just How Much of a Citizen Must You Be

In the soccer world, FIFA places some fairly strict limits on which country a player can represent. The main restriction is that once a player suits up for one country on the senior level, he/she is forever tied to that country. This is different than, say, Olympic sports, where athletes move around frequently to have easier routes to the Games (I remember in particular a Dutch speed skater who couldn't crack the Dutch Olympic team, so he moved to Belgium and represented that country in the Games). Still, there are some oddities in the FIFA system, mostly where a person born in one country becomes a citizen of another country solely to be a part of the new country's national team. David Regis, for example, represented the US in the 1998 World Cup after becoming a US citizen only when told he couldn't break in to the French national team. That sort of thing doesn't happen all the time, but it isn't exactly rare.

Still, I can't manage up the outrage for such situations that this column over on ESPN.com does. OK, so Portugal has a couple of native Brazilian forwards and the Poles rely on a Nigerian native to score their goals - who cares? In an increasingly small and mobile world, it would be very backward of soccer to refuse to recognize players as citizens of whatever country they are actually a citizen of. FIFA already prohibits country-hopping once a player has committed, so it's not as if Romario can shop his services around to the highest national team bidder. Seems to not be much of a problem to me.