The Best Footballers You've Never Heard Of

WTF did Briand do to his knee actually?

 

That sounds pretty nasty, has he come back from it/is he coming back from it?

 

LOL @ your posts about anything related to soccer.

Please tell me how it isn't right.

 

He was born in Brazil. He is now Croatian by citizenship.

So what.. only ethnic Croats can play for Croatia? Are you being racist?

LOL, he emigrated to Croatia as a young boy. Nah but at the age of four he wanted to get a name, yeah? Idiot.

You think Arsenal only found him only because he was playing in Croatia? FFS I'd rather look in Brazil for some talent rather than some derro country like Croatia.

 

Nah he came to Croatia at a very young age. He joined Dinamo at 16 though.

In most cases, that statement is actually correct (aside from the exposure part). People change their citizenship in an effort to play for a different national team for many reasons, but exposure is usually not one of them. It's either because they feel more loyal to another country, or because they couldn't get a shot for their home country.

An example of the former is Josip Simunic who wanted to play for Croatia rather than Australia (he was an Australian-born ethnic Croat). He wanted this because he felt loyal to Croatia rather than Australia. This is a patriotic feeling and has nothing to do with exposure.

An example of the latter is Alex (a different one to Chelsea's) who obtained Japanese citizenship and went to play for the Japanese national team simply because he had absolutely no chance in cracking the Brazilian national side (to be fair, I don't blame the bloke!). Now you tell me, where would he have had more exposure? In Japan or Brazil? Exposure has nothing to do with it...

Like I said, he may have had a choice to make... but he was already in Croatia from a very young age FFS.

Ethnicity or cultural background DOES NOT come into FIFA's regulations for national team selections. You need to understand this.

Birth or naturalisation is the only thing that matters. If you were born in Australia, you couldn't just go and play for Serbia because your name is Luka Popovic. You'd have to get Serbian citizenship first.

FIFA gives a really huge \_/ @ ethnic backgrounds. You can play wherever you want.

Also FTR, are you saying that an immigrant who has come to Australia and gotten citizenship last year is not an Australian? I hope you answer this correctly, because by law an immigrant who came here and got citizenship is just as Australian as myself who was born here. These are the universal rules of citizenship and are applied as such to football worlwide.

 

Thought I would bump this thread tbh..

People to post their own unknown players IMO.