12/21/24
January 19, 2011
'I Think My Number 10 is an American': The U.S. men's soccer team has begun taking on more foreign-born players who are eligible by birth, parent nationality or passport. Midfielder Mikkel Diskerud and forwards Juan Agudelo, Teal Bunbury and Eugene Starikov were born in Norway, Colombia, Canada and the former Soviet Union, respectively. One got here after U-20 match between the U.S. and Norway. U.S. U-20 coach Thomas Rongen said, "The head coach comes over to me at halftime to talk shop and says, 'I think my number 10 is an American.'" The player was Diskerud, whose mother hails from Arizona.
How many national sides (including us) feature players born in Brazil? And there are born in America guys like Giovanni Rossi, Neven Subotic and Boaz Myhill who could all have easily gotten USMNT minutes if they'd chosen to play for us.
posted by billsaysthis at 01:45 AM on January 20, 2011
Here's a list of top Brazilians playing for other countries from 2008. Higher profile names include Deco, Pepe, Eduardo and Marcos Senna.
And there are born in America guys like Giovanni Rossi, Neven Subotic and Boaz Myhill who could all have easily gotten USMNT minutes if they'd chosen to play for us.
Another one is Norway's/Fulham's Brede Hangeland, who was born in Houston. Rossi is really the outlier in terms of having substantially grown up in the U.S., while Myhill and Hangeland left very early and Subotic spent the first ten or so years of his life in Europe.
posted by holden at 10:56 AM on January 20, 2011
Agreed, holden, just saying it's hardly new or unique to America. Heck, IIRC, the team that famously beat England in the '50 World Cup had quite a few 'not born here' players.
posted by billsaysthis at 11:43 AM on January 20, 2011
Fine by me. It's not like all those guys with Jamaican accents wearing the Maple Leaf came from Winnipeg.