Top sports writer Martin Samuel has destroyed the critics with a withering comment aimed directly at the Republic of Ireland international system.
Writing in the Daily Mail Samuel declares with contemptuous ease: “Rice performed somersaults to avoid offending the nation of his grandparents but this drama wasn’t his fault.
If Ireland insist on making teenagers choose nationalities before they have picked their GCSE subjects, what do they expect?”
Ouch!
Samuel is now widely recognised as a doyen among sports writers and in showing that he has a much wider perspective on life than football, has delivered an uppercut to the jaws of those in charge of the game in the country.
It was always a given that Declan was going to receive plenty of stick – as prophesied by Gonzo in his latest vlog – but Samuel has truly hit where it hurts …and he’s right.
There’s far more to any youngster’s life – or should be – than football, however gifted he may be. Too many fail to concentrate on the academic qualifications that matter ahead of starting out in the game.
The result is that they either become pundits criticising the behaviour of players thirty or 40 years their juniors or they run pubs.
Samuel adds:”Rice will walk into the England squad, and quite possibly his team. He is the player Southgate has been missing, the central defensive midfielder with world-class potential.
Given the evidence of his first Premier League season, he could be better there than Jordan Henderson or Eric Dier.
He breaks up play, reads the game intelligently, passes well; 86 per cent accuracy for West Ham this season, if not with huge ambition as yet. He has excelled this season against the elite teams. He could be the missing link.
Rice is just the latest of their young English-born recruits to desert after Jack Grealish and Michael Keane. The department set up to tempt teenagers with Irish heritage are talent catchers, not talent keepers.
Footballers’ grannies were once used to give opportunity to those who were stuck in a dead end. It was perfectly obvious that Maidstone-born Andy Townsend wasn’t going to be picked by England when he elected to become Irish at 25. It was the only way he could play international football. That wasn’t necessarily true of Rice.
Townsend suffered an absence of choice until Ireland came along, Rice was simply offered more choices. It is the difference between opportunity and opportunism.
Let’s be honest, Martin Samuel hasn’t “destroyed” any critics with his GCSE jibe. It’s a cheap comment that displays his ignorance. Rice received his first full international cap in March 2018 when he was already an adult and 19 years old, an age when people are already finished with school and their GCSEs, not selecting subjects.
I fully accept that people have differing views. Personally, given his background, I have no issue whether he chose Ireland or England. It was his choice to make. Being English myself I think he will be an asset to our national side. What I think is wrong is that he accepted full international caps, as an adult, with one country and then dumped them when he later thought it was in his interest to play for another country. To me that lacks integrity and is disloyal.
Cheap remark = true remark!
I thought I explained pretty clearly above why Samuel’s remark was wrong and inconsistent with facts and reality.
I really feel like leaving this site as an Irish hammer. Fully agree with sparrow. Who has he destroyed in your eyes admin????
He played 3 times for Ireland. It’s totally morally and ethically wrong what he has done. We are a very proud nation. You don’t mess around with countries in that way. He has been playing for us u16 all the way up to seniors. Have some respect!!!!
Well, get you. Rice was pushed into making his initial choice at youth level, and simply continued on that track until the final decision for the rest of his career/life had to be made. It’s not about integrity, it’s about a) FIFA having a highly bendable set of rules, and b) a young man making a rational and reasoned decision at the point where he had to.
To state it ‘lacks integrity and is disloyal’ insults Declan without good cause and overlooks the fact that Ireland have been ‘playing the international ancestry game’ harvesting potential players in England – when they have only a tiny proportion of Irish blood – since Jack Charlton’s time in charge.
Hang your sanctimonious head in shame.
I’m not sure whether you failed to comprehend my point or simply decided to ignore it. Let me try to make it clearer for you.
I don’t have an issue with any country selecting players who qualify to play for them at any level.
I don’t have an issue with players choosing any country that they are qualified for.
I also don’t have an issue if they play at age group level and then decide to change allegiance at senior level when they have “grown up” and become personally responsible for decisions about their own career and life.
What I think lacks integrity is when you reach adulthood and decide to represent a country and accept full international caps from that country – as an adult – only to decide later that another country might be in your personal best interest. To then dump the original country and switch your allegiance to another country is disloyal and wrong, in my opinion (and your entitled to your own opinion, after all we clearly have different values).
Just as an aside, I also think that when you ask a character such as John Terry for advice, you should accept that it may not yield an opinion based on morality.
The switch issue isn’t about ‘full caps’ or ‘adulthood’, it’s about knowingly having the choice whether to play competitive games. That’s when you make the choice, hence Declan’s moratorium on playing for anyone until he’d seen where his future lay. I’m sure Ryan Giggs privately (I’ve read the public rhetoric) wishes he’d had the foresight to hold fire, rather then jump for wales when he was really English, just because he didn’t like his Dad.
As for John Terry, you’ve got me banged to rights there. We can only hope his advice in private is more palatable than his pubic demeanour, Wish he’d stuck with us, though.
Giggs from England schoolboys to Wales…Diego Costa…Di Stefano representing three nations. Come on – bin going on for years. I don’t remember them being crucified. How Declan can be held accountable for a decision he was helped to make at 15 or 16 when deciding as he became a first team regular etc he would make a more “considered” opinion is beyond me. I respect him as a young man with much integrity. If I’m being asked to respect the Irish authorities it follows that I can have none for Declan. That won’t happen.
I wonder if Samuel thinks England insisisted Raheem Sterling make his choice of nationality when he appeared for England U16 prior to his GCSEs.
As someone brought up in very similar circumstances to Dec I would have chosen and stuck with Ireland. Dec has switched and that’s his choice. To suggest that the FAI operate in an immoral and dark manner towards youngsters insults them, people’s intelligence and their heritage. This is something that someone who has mainly worked for The Sun and The Mail should know all about.
If we were offered a job with better prospects, we would probably all take it.
So if it wasn’t rice’s fault Samuel whose was it????a typical tabloid reporter. I have no issue with rice now playing for England. It could be Swaziland for all I care. But when you accept full caps you stay with that country. I don’t expect Declan to stay at west ham. If he can do that to a country I’d imagine to a club he wouldn’t even think twice.
There have been many examples of players performing for an international team before joining another – look it up in Google …Shola Ameobi and a certain Matt Holland spring to mind. I don’t remember this sort of fuss notably from TalkSport. The problem here is that Rice is better than all of them – nothing else.
Not with full senior international caps. Please get your facts right.
By the way if the shoe was on the other foot and he defected from England to Ireland I could imagine the outcry. Effigies and whatnot.
By the way sparrow very good points you made. Very unbiased view
Hey demon can you tell me how it’s not disloyal please?