Stop trading our citizenship for mediocre foreign talent

TRADITIONALLY, we believe the citizenship we are born with is what we have for life. Unless we decide to leave our motherland and emigrate.In today’s borderless world, professionals, businessmen or students are attracted by the opportunity to improve their quality of life and make more money.

For athletes, in particular footballers, they trade talent and their CVs for citizenship or naturalisation.

The FIFA World Cup in Qatar last December was the latest reflection of how the world works today.

It was a window into migration patterns, with only four nations featuring all home-born talents.

While our neighbours Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia were quick to capitalise on the FIFA ruling which allows for naturalisation, the FA of Malaysia (FAM) were reluctant to embrace the idea for fear of political backlash.

FAM first mooted the idea in 2006 when they discovered Glasgow Celtic’s Shaun Maloney was born in Miri, Sarawak but had already represented Scotland at senior level.

It was only during the last decade the idea was pursued by the authorities.

By then, Indonesia had approached Irfan Bachdim from FC Utrecht and wooed Radja Nainggolan from Italian club Piacenza, on top of getting Cristian Gonzalez later. The Philippines boasted of Chelsea duo – James and Philip Younghusband – who played in the Manila SEA Games in 2005.

For the naysayers, they pointed out Singapore’s venture outside the island to bolster their footballing fortunes without much success.

Egmar Goncalves, Itimi Dickson, Agu Casmir and Daniel Bennett were members of the Singapore team who were thrashed 4-0 by Akmal Rizal Ahmad Rakhli and Co in the AFF Cup in 2002.

But nine years later, Singapore had Bosnian-born Aleksandar Duric and Chinese-born Shi Jiayi to thank for in showing Malaysia the exit from the World Cup qualifiers.

At that point of time, FIFA rules stated a player must either have lived in a country for at least two years, or have a parent or grandparent born in that country, to be eligible for a change of nationalities.

Although traditionalists scoff at this idea, describing the move as violating the spirit of international competition and wiping the Malaysian identity out of the national team, the trend was too hard to ignore.

When Datuk Hamidin Mohd Amin was installed as the FAM president in July 2018, he launched the naturalisation project as a short-term measure to help the present national set-up plug the gaps.

There are two categories of naturalised players – foreign-born footballers with no ancestral ties who changed their nationality and those who were born outside the country but with parental links to the country, simply known as heritage players.

At the time of writing, the Malaysian team have nine foreign-born footballers with no connection with the country that have been granted citizenship – Mohammadou Sumareh, Kiko and Natxo Insa, Guilherme de Paula, Liridon Krasniqi, Lee Tuck, Sergio Aguero, Paulo Josue, and Endrick dos Santos. Romel Morales’ application is apparently being processed.

Out of these 10 names, FAM initiated the application for Brazilian-born de Paula, and Krasniqi, originally from Kosovo.

The rest were granted citizenship following applications from their clubs.

As many as seven naturalised players could be eligible for selection when Kim Pan-gon names his final squad for the AFC Asian Cup in Qatar early next year.

Heritage players such as Junior Eldstal, Darren Lok, Samuel Somerville, Nick Swirad, Matthew Davies, Brendan Gan, Khair Jones, La’Vere Corbin-Ong, Stuart Wilkin, David Rowley, Daniel Ting, Quentin Cheng, Nooa Laine and Wan Kuzri Wan Ahmad Kamal are welcomed additions for Pan-gon.

However, while I am surprised that the Home Ministry has been very generous in granting passports to foreign-born footballers, Pan-gon has to give home-grown talent such as Faisal, Arif Aiman Hanapi, Akhyar Rashid and Syafiq Ahmad equal opportunity to impress.

In the final analysis, the Malaysian passport is a precious commodity that cannot be traded with foreigners who are of the same standard as our home-grown products.