Players eligible for Ireland

Yeah, maybe so. I suppose we’ll find out

I mean, we should be taking the doors off to get him in, considering he chose us before the Lux/Sweden hooha. The recent rule change should make him eligible for us i believe 

Ah was good at Bayern to be fair on the bench for friendlies Sevilla still a very good team

How does that make him eligible though? That rule change is regarding players who have made less than 3 senior caps under the age of 21 no longer being cap tied. That has zero relevance to the Johansson situation. 

He was deemed ineligible because he has played in official youth competitions for Luxembourg thus requiring him to file a one time switch. To file the switch, the rules state he has to have been eligible to play for Ireland at the time of his Luxembourg youth cap. The argument FIFA said was he wasn’t an Irish citizen so wasn’t eligible for Ireland at the time of his official Luxembourg youth cap. What you’ve linked makes no mention of this rule or it being changed. 

It was still thought that he was ok through the grandparents but the Luxembourg FA picked up on wording in the regulations that said that he had to be an Irish citizen when he played competitively for Luxembourg. If his mother had been born in Ireland he would have automatically been an Irish citizen, but she wasn't and he hadn't gone through the foreign birth register process via his grandparents at that stage, so he wasn't actually an Irish citizen when he played competitively for Luxembourg. This made him ineligible for us once he took the competitive caps for Luxembourg.

The new rules introduced last autumn brought in a number of changes and clarifications. The main one about three caps and age 21 etc is posted a few posts up. But that's not the one that relates to Johansson. There was another change that clarified that if a player has played underage competitively for one country and wants to change to another, he no longer needs to have been a citizen of the new country at the time he played for the old country. This is the change that makes him eligible for us again.

There is one other caveat though - you can only make one switch. It had been reported that Johansson had decided to switch to a third country, Sweden. If that paperwork had gone through he would be ineligible for us as he had used his switch and couldn't switch again. However, according to the man himself this week, he hasn't actually switched to Sweden. If that is correct he can still play for us.

Hopefully he has since gone and gotten his Irish passport, as the Foreign birth register process is lengthy, especially at the moment with Covid and Brexit. If he has done, things would hopefully be relatively straightforward if he wants to switch to us and hopefully the FAI would help with the paperwork to FIFA. If he hasn't done the foreign birth register process yet he won't be playing under 21 for us I think, because it will take too long to get all the paperwork sorted.

Having said all that, while he does appear to be eligible under the new rules, he also needs to actually want to declare for us. It sounded from the interview he gave that he was still open to all three countries at this point. He probably needs to make that decision first of all.

Do you have an actual quote for the bolded or where in the new laws it states that? I've yet to actually find where it says that anywhere. 

A former Brazilian youth player has recently expressed interest in playing for Canada but like Johansson, he wasn't a Canadian citizen at the time of his official Brazil youth caps which would render him ineligible unless the rules regarding this specific point have been changed. I just can't find anywhere that mentions this area when talking of the law changes.