Joshua Sur­tees

If you were an in­ter­na­tion­al foot­baller, which coun­try would you play for?

For most of us the an­swer would be fair­ly ob­vi­ous–your coun­try of birth. But for some peo­ple there are a num­ber of ways we might have end­ed up play­ing for oth­er coun­tries.

Back home in Lon­don, I have many friends who could have played for the Re­pub­lic of Ire­land be­cause their par­ents or grand­par­ents are from there. In­deed, when Ire­land trav­elled to Italy for the 1990 World Cup Fi­nals, 13 of their 22-man squad were born in Eng­land (two in Scot­land, one in Wales and just five in Ire­land.)

At Brazil 2014, a stag­ger­ing 16 of Al­ge­ria's play­ers were born in France. Many of them play in the French league but, be­cause of their Al­ger­ian an­ces­try, there is noth­ing stop­ping them from choos­ing to play for ei­ther coun­try.

Some­times play­ers make the choice based on their affin­i­ty with, say, France or Al­ge­ria, and play for the coun­try they feel more con­nec­tion to. But of­ten it is more prag­mat­ic–get­ting in­to the French side is dif­fi­cult so, if a play­er wants to have the chance of com­pet­ing at a World Cup, it makes sense to go for the "eas­i­er" op­tion.

In re­cent years Eng­land's crick­et team has re­cruit­ed play­ers from Aus­tralia and South Africa who, per­haps, weren't good enough to make those sides but were wel­comed in­to the Eng­land fold. This was a huge de­par­ture from the old days when el­i­gi­bil­i­ty rules were so strict that coun­ties like York­shire re­quired its play­ers to have been born with­in the bor­ders of the coun­ty it­self.

In foot­ball, FI­FA has been lib­er­al with its el­i­gi­bil­i­ty laws since the mid-20th cen­tu­ry. In the past, play­ers were even al­lowed to switch na­tion­al sides.

Al­fre­do di Ste­fano played for Ar­genti­na in 1947, Colom­bia in 1949 and Spain be­tween 1957 and 1961. His Re­al Madrid team­mate Fer­enc Puskas al­so played for Spain af­ter a dis­tin­guished ca­reer for his na­tive Hun­gary.

In 2004, FI­FA pres­i­dent Sepp Blat­ter de­scribed the loose­ness of the laws on "nat­u­ralised" play­ers as a "farce". If a play­er lives and plays in a coun­try for five years or more they are nor­mal­ly el­i­gi­ble for both a pass­port and a place in the na­tion­al side of his or her adopt­ed coun­try. Spain's Diego Cos­ta, Croa­t­ia's Ed­uar­do and Italy's Thi­a­go Mot­ta, for ex­am­ple, are all Brazil­ian by birth. Ar­genti­na's Li­onel Mes­si and Javier Mascher­a­no both hold Span­ish pass­ports and could, tech­ni­cal­ly, switch al­le­giance.

Speak­ing to the T&T Guardian via Skype from Lon­don, on a day when the World Cup throws up an­oth­er set of in­trigu­ing match ups in­clud­ing Bosnia-Iran and Switzer­land-Hon­duras, Of­fer says the idea for his an­ces­try in­fo­graph­ic came to him in dur­ing the 2006 World Cup in Ger­many.

"The Aus­tralian team has a lot to do with," he says "Tra­di­tion­al­ly, foot­ball in Aus­tralia is a sort of ma­ligned code. You've got Aus­tralian Rules Foot­ball, Rug­by League, Rug­by Union and Crick­et. Foot­ball is right down the list.

"Aus­tralia's equiv­a­lent of Bob­by Moore, a guy called Jo­hh­ny War­ren, his bi­og­ra­phy is called Sheilas, Wogs and Poofters. Be­cause, if you played foot­ball in Aus­tralia in the sev­en­ties or eight­ies, you were ba­si­cal­ly called a Sheila, a wog or a poofter."

In Aus­tralia, "wog" is a per­jo­ra­tive term for peo­ple of Greek or Ital­ian de­scent. "Sheilas" means girls or women. "Poofters" is a deroga­to­ry term for gays.

"The Aus­tralian team has al­ways been very mul­ti­cul­tur­al and the project start­ed be­cause there were a lot of new names in the team that I didn't know–very Croa­t­ian and Ital­ian names–and I was in­ter­est­ed in where they came from," he ex­plains.

He cites the fa­mous in­ci­dent in 2006 when Aus­tralia were play­ing Croa­t­ia and ref­er­ee Howard Webb mis­tak­en­ly gave a Croat three yel­low cards.

"There were so many Croa­t­ian play­ers on the Aus­tralian team he ba­si­cal­ly got their names mixed up. So I looked at the crossover be­tween Aus­tralia and Croa­t­ia and found it re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing to look at the eth­nic and na­tion­al­i­ty crossover of oth­er teams and found it was larg­er than I ex­pect­ed."

Dur­ing our Skype call I play around with the tool while Of­fer ex­plains some of the in­ter­est­ing cas­es...

? Any play­er born in Koso­vo, in the for­mer Yu­goslavia, is al­lowed to play for Bosnia, Ser­bia or Al­ba­nia. Be­cause Koso­vo on­ly has an Un­der 21 team, not a full na­tion­al side.

? Bel­gium's Ad­nan Januzaj, born in Brus­sels, is the most "con­nect­ed:"play­er in the tour­na­ment. His par­ents' na­tion­al­i­ties make him el­i­gi­ble for Bosnia, Ser­bia, Al­ba­nia and Koso­vo. His grand­par­ents make him al­so el­i­gi­ble for Turkey.

? Switzer­land is the most mul­ti­cul­tur­al team, with 21 play­ers who would be el­i­gi­ble to play for oth­er na­tions.

? Aus­tralia's star, Tim Cahill, played for Samoa at Un­der-20 lev­el aged just 14 but lat­er said he took that op­por­tu­ni­ty "sim­ply as a chance to go on hol­i­day be­cause my grand­moth­er was ill at the time in Samoa. It was a chance to go back and see her on ex­pens­es as the Samoans were pay­ing for all my flights, ac­com­mo­da­tion and liv­ing ex­pens­es. I could not have cared less about play­ing for them."

? Ac­cord­ing to Of­fer, "A lot of the Niger­ian team are pret­ty much born and bred Cock­ney Lon­don­ers."

? Mean­while, Nige­ria's Pe­ter Odemwinghie was born in Tashkent, Uzbek­istan, in what was then the USSR. Of­fer be­lieves the So­vi­et Union used to en­cour­age coun­tries with so­cial­ist gov­ern­ments to send peo­ple to USSR out­posts for var­i­ous types of train­ing.

? Play­ers born in the for­mer Yu­goslavia are dis­persed across Bosnia, Croa­t­ia and Aus­tralia at Brazil 2014. "If Yu­goslavia was still to­geth­er there would be three sides worth of play­ers," says Of­fer.

? Uruguay has plen­ty of play­ers with Ital­ian an­ces­try, due to post-WWII mi­gra­tion.

? Mean­while, Italy is one of the least con­nect­ed teams in tour­na­ment, the ob­vi­ous ex­cep­tion be­ing Mario Balotel­li, whose Ghana­ian her­itage and sulky de­meanour has led right-wing com­men­ta­torsin Italy to ques­tion his loy­al­ty to the Az­zuri.

? In the USA, which has an­oth­er team de­scend­ed from mi­grants, right-wing blog­ger Ann Coul­ter wrote a typ­i­cal­ly provoca­tive piece last week de­scrib­ing Amer­i­ca's new­found fond­ness for foot­ball as a symp­tom of the "the na­tion's moral de­cay." She went on to say, "If more 'Amer­i­cans' are watch­ing soc­cer to­day, it's on­ly be­cause of...Ted­dy Kennedy's 1965 im­mi­gra­tion law...No Amer­i­can whose great-grand­fa­ther was born here is watch­ing soc­cer."

? The Boateng broth­ers, born in Berlin to the same Ghana­ian fa­ther, have played against each oth­er in the 2010 and 2014 World Cups for dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Kevin Prince-Boateng plays for Ghana while younger broth­er Jerome plays for Ger­many. In 2010, Ger­many won 1-0. In 2014 they played out a thrilling 2-2 draw.

Caribbean de­scen­dants in Brazil

Trac­ing the an­ces­try of the play­ers at the World Cup has been made sim­pler by Aus­tralian web de­sign­er James Of­fer, who has re­searched the an­ces­try (par­ents and grand­par­ents) of every play­er in the tour­na­ment and cre­at­ed a fas­ci­nat­ing dig­i­tal in­fo­graph­ic tool.

The in­ter­ac­tive web page www.code­he­sive.com/wc-an­ces­try al­lows users to hov­er over any of the 32 coun­tries com­pet­ing and see, in­stant­ly dis­played on­screen, the con­nec­tions of each team in a neat­ly de­signed colour di­a­gram. To the side, spe­cif­ic de­tails of each play­er's parent­age are list­ed.

For peo­ple who thought there was no Caribbean pres­ence at the World Cup, a quick glance at Eng­land proves them wrong.

On the eve of the Uruguay match, Eng­land's play­ers held a con­fer­ence in which 19-year-old at­tack­ing mid­field­er Ra­heem Ster­ling spoke about his mum, Na­dine, a mas­sive in­flu­ence on his life and ca­reer dur­ing his for­ma­tive years grow­ing up in Maver­ley in Kingston, Ja­maica. The Ster­ling fam­i­ly lived there un­til 2002, when young Ra­heem was eight years old. Na­dine Ster­ling then brought the fam­i­ly to live in Neas­den, north­west Lon­don, where he grew up with the gi­ant Wem­b­ley arch con­stant­ly in his sights.

Ster­ling's path–he now plays for Liv­er­pool in the Pre­mier League–mir­rors that of John Barnes, a play­er al­so born in Ja­maica who moved to Eng­land at a young age and end­ed up an An­field leg­end af­ter a spell at a small­er club (Wat­ford in Barnes' case, QPR for Ster­ling.)

Barnes and Ster­ling both had the choice of play­ing for Ja­maica. Both chose Eng­land, but in very dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances.

The tox­ic racism which greet­ed Barnes' ear­ly ap­pear­ances in the Eng­land shirt has now been con­signed to his­to­ry and Ster­ling and oth­er black Eng­land play­ers ex­press them­selves in a dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al cli­mate.

For Eng­land, Daniel Stur­ridge and Alex Olade-Cham­ber­lain both have Ja­maican grand­par­ents.

In the Dutch side, Nigel De Jong, Je­re­main Lens, Georgino Wi­j­nal­dum and Michael Vorm all have par­ents from Suri­name. Leroy Fer is from Cu­ra­cao in the Dutch An­tilles.

Jozy Al­ti­dore, the USA strik­er, has Hait­ian parent­age. In the French team, Loic Re­my's fa­ther was born in Mar­tinique.

But, alas... there are no Tri­nis.