Born in England, his dad is English and his mum Gibraltarian. His mum is a runner who competed for Gibraltar.
I dunno but you would think his agent, if he has one would be having a word with him to hold out for a while to see how far he goes. I mean Gibraltar will always be an option for him but if he’s good enough the rewards for waiting for England could be huge.
They've already had their greatest result with him scoring. I think the problem with English youth football now is that its becoming very unequal so these crazy results are more common. If you look at United's youth side in terms of prospects then Scanlon is good but far from great.
Gibraltar are basically the worst team in world football by now. I couldn't imagine Italy losing a potential international to San Marino through family heritage.
It is not really a big surprise that someone would want to represent the nation of their parent. Scanlon’s mum seems very proud to be a Gibraltarian. It doesn’t really matter how good the nation is if the connection the individual has is strong. Maybe he never felt England would be an option though. Who knows but it is another case of a player with a very strong connection to another nation. Gabriella Falero, who represented Gibraltar as an athlete in international competition, was one of those who said their own identity is not well understood in Spain or England. “People do not appreciate what a Gibraltarian is,” Falero said. “A Gibraltarian is very British, but is not English. My grandmother was descended from Genoa (in northwest Italy), the other side was Maltese, we have Spanish and Portuguese in the bloodline. We like to go on the world stage and say, ‘This is who we are — we’re not English, we’re not Spanish, we’re Gibraltarian’.” https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5756112/2024/09/10/gibraltar-spain-morata-rodri-chants/
Its legitimate enough to represent a country if you have a parent from there. His Dad is English though and he was born and raised here so you would expect him to have more affinity with England.
Lewis Koumas was mentioned a lot previously but he’s still not done enough to even earn a place in our U21’s. It feels like it would have been impossible to retain him even if he was in our set up. We would probably be offering him an U20 squad place at best (no guarantee of even starting). Whereas Wales are starting him in competitive games.
You might expect it but it is hard to know what the family dynamics are like. Again, it might have also been a case of not fancying his chances with England long term aswell.