Mikel Are-Not-A Three Lion

These two won't be teammates again.

After Mikel Arteta made noise last month about playing for the Three Lions, it appears the FA has snuffed out the idea in short order. The FA just read the rule that would theoretically allow Arteta to play for England and figured out it wouldn’t allow it.

Funny how rules work. To make the switch, Arteta had to have English eligibility at the time he played for Spain. Clearly that was not the case.

Previously it was thought that because Arteta had only played for Spain at the youth level, he could take advantage of the new FIFA rule that would allow him to play for England after he acquired UK citizenship. Arteta was eligible to be a citizen because he had been in England for five years. After this came to light everybody was in a tizzy.

The home nations claimed this would violate some gentleman’s agreement. Others gnashed teeth and rended garments with ideas that this would ruin the purity of English football. All predictably overwrought and hypersensitive.

All of which prevented people from actually reading the applicable rule. Article 18.1.a (PDF Warning) of the FIFA statutes controls the changing of football nationalities and reads as follows:

If a Player has more than one nationality, or if a Player acquires a new nationality, or if a Player is eligible to play for several representative teams due to nationality, he may, only once, request to change the Association for which he is eligible to play international matches to the Association of another country of which he holds nationality, subject to the following conditions:

(a) He has not played a match (either in full or in part) in an official competition at “A” international level for his current Association, and at the time of his fi rst full or partial appearance in an international match in an official competition for his current Association, he already had the nationality of the representative team for which he wishes to play.

The weird thing about the rule is the results it can cause. For example, Arteta apparently can’t play for England because he was good enough to play for the Spanish youth national teams but not for the full team. However, Manuel Almunia could play for England because he wasn’t good enough for any Spanish national team. Same goes for Eduardo, Marcos Senna and probably twenty other Brazilians. Because they were not talented enough to get a sniff on the youth level, they can blithely shop around looking for another nation to represent.

Clearly the purpose of the rule is to prevent a player from shopping around nationalities in an attempt to play international football. However, if FIFA is going to allow a player to nationalize to another country and play soccer and allow a youth player with dual nationality to suit up for one nation then another, then the kissing cousin of these two would be allowing an Arteta situation and forbidding it, while understandable, is a bit arbitrary.

It would be like allowing all nude strip clubs without liquor or topless clubs with liquor in the same state–a distinction without real effect. You can get wasted in one and walk next door to see the fully monty and the only thing the law does is prevent you from doing the same at one place.

That said, we don’t think anybody has ever accused FIFA of being logical.