Go Home and Play You Foreigners

By: BC | March 16th, 2007

It’s been a topic of debate by some, and as of late, a bit of a finger pointing concern at Manchester City by Richard Dunne. It would seem to some that the English Prem is lacking in, well, English players. In my mind two teams really stick out when we talk about foreigners dominating a side, obviously the Gooners, and my beloved Wanderers. The Whites have three standard English players in Nicky Hunt, Kevin Davies, and Kevin Nolan, and in time perhaps David Thompson.

Well if we were to have a team consisting solely of Englishmen when it came time for international weeks like the one ahead of us, most of our team would be sitting around and training. This is good, but at this stage in the season, it’s good to keep match fit and play a match a week or so. When we field only a few quality individuals from any given country, it’s likely they’ll be called up for international duty, so it is with Bolton this upcoming week. Of our eighteen listed possibilities for Saturdays match against Manchester United, nine have been called up for senior international duty. On top of that, one of our players out on loan has been called up for the national team, and a handful have been called up for their countries youth squads (most of them on loan.) All in all, fifteen of our boys have been called into international duty.

Idan Tal, and Tal Ben Haim have both been called up by Israel. Tal hasn’t seen much time for the Whites while Ben Haim has really been a stand out in the back.

Stelios will play for Greece

Jääskeläinen will mind the net for Finland.

El-Hadji Diouf and Abdoulaye Faye will play for Senegal against Tanzania.

Ricardo Gardener will play for Jamaica.

The other Faye, Méïté, will play two matches for the Cote D’Ivorie.

Andranik, who has really showed his promise when he’s been given minutes, will play for Iran.

New signing, and on loan defender Ľubomír Michalík, has been called up to the Slovakian national team.

Our youngsters Johann Smith, and Ricardo Vaz Té (both on loan) have been called into action for the US and Portugal respectively, while the Polish threesome of Jaroslaw Fojut, Blazej Augustyn and Przemysław Kazimierczak have all been called up (I really can’t wait until they make it to the first team and we have to wrap our mouths around those names.)