Sam Allardyce says he remains keen to consider any player eligible
for England regardless of whether they only qualify through residency.
Allardyce
has already confirmed that he had explored the possibility of calling
up Sevilla midfielder Steven N’Zonzi, who spent six years in England
with Stoke City and Blackburn Rovers, only to discover he was ineligible
after having represented his homeland, France, at under-21 level.
Fabio
Capello had previously made an attempt to secure Spanish midfielder
Mikel Arteta’s services, which foundered for the same reason, and
Allardyce said the Football Association has a department actively
exploring potential options for new recruits.
The new England boss
told reporters: “Do you pick the best squad to win the World Cup, and
if one or two of those are like N’Zonzi, do you do it? Or don’t you? And
then you suffer the consequences of not winning it or not getting to
the quarterfinal and failure, so if that player is top quality…
“Cricket do it, don’t they? Rugby do it, athletics do it. It’s not happening anyway so we can cover that again if it does.
“It’s
not my department to find those. We have a department to look at the
whole situation at all areas for every international team.”
As
Allardyce has highlighted, the England cricket team has regularly used
foreign-born players such as Eoin Morgan and the rugby union side has
players including Manu Tuilagi.
The football team has included
players born outside England but has so far focused on those who moved
to the country in their youth, like Jamaicans John Barnes and Raheem
Sterling, or have English parents, like Owen Hargreaves.
Other
nations have brought in naturalised players, including Spain’s Marcos
Senna and Diego Costa and Portugal’s Deco and Pepe, while Italy have a
long history of using “oriundo.”
Allardyce said naturalising foreign players “happens in all the other
countries” and pointed to “the shortage of English players in the
Premier League,” adding: “I think it is only 31 percent, and if those
don’t play on a regular basis, surely if you are going to win something
and that player is of the calibre to force his way into that side then
you give him a chance.
“It’s a very delicate subject. I’ll have to
see if I actually do it one day how it’s perceived across the nation.
If he goes out and scores the winner, will it be quite that bad?”
England
have endured a long period of disappointment at international level,
and the criticism of the players’ efforts at Euro 2016 has persisted due
to the contrast with Great Britain’s success at the Olympic Games,
where only United States collected more gold medals.
Allardyce
said: “I think that we all come under scrutiny in football terms,
particularly after the Olympics, about what is our identity? The
Olympians have got great credit for what they’ve done and achieved
again, so what do we take from that to make our identity?
“For me
it’s about going out and the players showing not just how passionate
they are, but how skilful they are at international level.”
The
61-year-old former Bolton, Blackburn, West Ham and Sunderland boss said
he was viewing the England job as “the final challenge of a long career”
and that he would “leave no stone unturned, to give them [the players]
all the capabilities and possibilities physically, technically,
tactically and mentally to cope with what’s coming their way.”
He
added: “That’s the greatest challenge of all for me. Having conquered —
if you like — the Premier League for so long with so many different
clubs, this challenge is a much wider scope and much more challenging,
but for me much more exciting.”
