Quote:
Originally Posted by nfotiu
I take a lot of exception to those comments. As a Canadian father of 2 boys born in the US, I (as does the Canadian government) consider them Canadian citizens. Just because I decided to live in the same country as their mother doesn't mean that they should be any less Canadian and undeserving of deciding to play for Canada if they chose to. You should be able to represent the country you are a citizen of regardless of whether you lived there growing up.
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Having a passport/being a citizen doesn't allow you to represent that country (FIFA rules). You need to have lived there for a minimum of 5 years as well or satisfy their ancestry rules... I believe there are a couple of players in Canada right now who have Canadian citizenship from playing for our MLS teams but aren't eligible to suit up for the CMNT because they haven't lived in Canada for five years.
I respect that you consider your kids Canadian and would never argue their right to Canadian citizenship, holding a Canadian passport, have the right to live here in the future etc etc but I can't agree that someone who has never lived in a country should be playing for it's national teams. To me that defeats the whole purpose of international representative sport, just my opinion anyway.