Spot the Englishman…

February 26th, 2009 | by: Daryl |

I’m not normally one to bang on about there being “too many foreigners” in the English Premier League. Clearly, there are too many foreigners and that’s not good for the English national team. But until English players stop being cowards and start crossing the Channel to earn a living, it’s hard to lay the blame exclusively at the feet of Johnny F.

However. I was a little concerned when my blog-brother Chris gleeeeefully pointed out that there was only one actual Englishman in the starting line-up for the Arsenal 1-0 Roma Champions League game this week.

Digital pat on the back for the first person to spot him:

And no, it’s not Manuel Almunia.

England Football Team World Cup Blog RSS Feed

http://mexico.worldcupblog.org Andrea

Simone Perrotta! He was born in England…but doesn’t play for them.
Nick

Riise.
http://epl.theoffside.com Rob

Thats quite impressive, in a really strange way, that Perrotta is the only Englishman.
alessio

Of course Perrotta!
http://www.worldcupblog.org Daryl

Yep, digital pat on the back goes to Andrea. From Wikipedia:

Simone Perrotta was born in Ashton-Under-Lyne.

I can tell you two things about Ashton-Under-Lyne:

1. It’s a few miles east of Manchester.
2. The town’s website is in drastic need of a makeover.

As I understand it, his parents are both 100% Italian, but he was born and briefly raised in England. From his Wikipedia page:

Perrotta lived in England until the age of 6, attending school at St. Ann’s R.C primary school in Ashton. His parents, Francesco and Anna Maria ran a pub in Ashton and lived on Fitzroy Street and briefly at the Chiltern Chapel before moving back to Italy in 1982. Perrotta is of Calabrian origin though born in England.
Omar

This is stupid. I’m so tired of hearing this xenophobic whining about the state of the premier league. The fact that the EPL is saturated with foreigners says that the English pool of talent needs to get better not bigger. Its ridiculous, as soon as the English national team starts having a mini-crisis and becomes a mere shadow of itself, all of a sudden everyone raises their burning torches and puts the blame on foreign players. It’s not even logical. It’s not as if clubs are biased against the English, they’re just so damned expensive (Darren Bent 16.5 mil?! David Bentley +15 mill?! Defoe for 15.5 mil??, some of these guys are hardly even starters) and not very good.
http://www.worldcupblog.org Daryl

Omar, did you even read the post above?