Nationality game a slippery ball to catch in an age of professional athletes sans frontieres

It would be a rare player who could prove a single ancestry

TWO things are clear from all the frothing and philosophising that has being going on this week: One, nation against nation does more to underpin global sport than anything else and, two, what constitutes nationality gets more confused with every passing day. Especially in sport.

It starts with that well-known Englishman, Adnan Januzaj. One of the Wiltshire Januzajs, isn't he? Weren't you at school with his father? That would have been Januzaj Minor. I think Anthony Powell based a minor character in A Dance to the Music of Time on his great-grandfather, actually.

Januzaj isn't entirely English, of course. He's Kosovan. And Albanian. And Turkish. Serbian, too. And somewhat Belgian.

Jack Wilshere looked at this from an English point of view, saying: "The only people who should play for England are English."

Which is all very well, but what about Januzaj? He's not really English, but then he's not really any one of the above, either. By Wilshere's Law, this talented young footballer shouldn't play football for any country at all.

And, anyway, what makes an English person English? Januzaj is learning his trade in England, so that makes him English enough, doesn't it? It's a good argument, one that makes this column Chinese. I learnt a good deal of my own trade over the four years I was based in Hong Kong (and if China wants me on its eventing team, I'd be proud to answer the call).

I'm not the only Times columnist with ambiguous nationality. Tony Cascarino, an Englishman of Italian extraction, was a committed Irishman, despite having the "O" at the wrong end of his name. He played for Ireland 88 times and scored 19 goals. He later discovered that his connection with Ireland was invalid. "I was a fraud. A fake Irishman," he said. Didn't stop him being a frightening centre forward for Ireland.

We celebrated Andy Murray's victory as a great British success, and so it was. But what happens if Scotland secedes from Britain? Do we English lose our share in the victory? Murray once bantered about supporting "anyone but England", but then most English people have bantered about Murray being either a great British success or a great Scottish failure.

Anyway, isn't Murray Spanish? The crucial experience of his life was his self-imposed exile to Spain at 15. He learnt much of his trade in that period. For that matter, seven years ago the LTA tried to persuade Novak Djokovic to be British rather than Serbian. There was a suggested Scottish connection, perhaps in the first syllable of his surname.

In 1995, a notorious article in the now defunct Wisden Cricket Monthly suggested that England failed because non-white cricketers were not truly committed to the England cause. Four years later, the England cricket team began its revival under the furious captaincy of the Indian-born Nasser Hussain. He learnt his cricket in this country, though -- mostly from his Indian father, Joe.

Mo Farah is the best example of a deeply British athlete with non-British roots. His story reflects nothing but good things about this country: Farah was born in Somalia, came here at eight as a refugee and thrived, peaking for the Olympic Games in London. An inspiring tale.

So, yes, people move about. It's been happening since boats such as Kon-Tiki, but it happens a lot faster and a lot more often these days. People move for curiosity, for adventure, to escape misery, to seek happiness, to seek money, to pursue a professional opportunity, to give opportunities to their children.

And sport adapts. Not without a great grumbling reluctance, but we are no longer surprised to find that black footballers play for England with skill, intelligence, commitment and courage. No one these days suggests that Rio Ferdinand, say, is not fully English.

So fine, we've all moved on and that's a good thing, if at times a confusing thing. International sport requires precise definition of a person's nationality if it is to work. So we have Chris Froome legitimately as a Brit, rather than -- equally legitimately -- as a Kenyan. People migrate. So we deal with it. So sport deals with it as best it can.

The problem is, it's getting more and more difficult. People migrate to pursue careers and, these days, sport is a career. Naturally, people migrate for purely sporting reasons. Thirty years ago, the idea of a Belgian-Kosovan-Albanian-Serb-Turk playing in Manchester would have seemed absurd. Now it's the way of sport.

Kevin Pietersen is a classic example of one of sport's economic migrants. He was quick to jump on Wilshere and tweet his objections. "Interested to know how you define foreigner? Would that include me?"

Well, yes, Kev, since you put it that way. Pietersen didn't leave South Africa for any edifying reason; he had a problem with the quota system and, well, Pietersen does rather tend to fall out with people. He didn't come here for a love of the land of Shakespeare and Ruddles beer, he came here to pursue his career.

John Woodcock, former cricket correspondent of The Times, wrote in Wisden of the late Tony Greig, another South African emigre, and said he's "not an Englishman through and through". Nor is KP, and I'm pretty certain Pietersen himself would agree.

Does that invalidate him as an England cricketer? Should England have refused to pick him? Your call: but had we sent him back with a flea in his ear, I'd have missed three of the finest Test innings played: the Oval 2005, Adelaide 2010, Mumbai 2012. Should a talent such as this have been lost to international sport because Pietersen lacked a nation to play for? Your call again.

International sport comes from its audience's sense of national identity, as Norman Tebbit observed. To make it work, we need to identify with the people who perform in our national colours. This has required a series of violent adjustments, but most of us have made most of them, which is why the Olympic Stadium echoed to British cheers for a man named Mohamed, and it was as joyous an occasion as I've experienced in a stadium.

We talk about the need for rational eligibility criteria, but the problem is that the sense of national identity isn't an entirely rational thing.

Meanwhile, the world goes on changing and sport goes on getting richer -- becoming in the process a more enticing career path with every passing year.

More and more people migrate for sporting reasons. For years, the Japan rugby union team has contained non-ethnic Japanese players, rugby migrants seeking adventure, fame and fortune. For much longer, New Zealand has trawled the entire Pacific for All Blacks.

Money tends to have the final say and, increasingly, nations are getting the athletes that they can afford. Perhaps this will eventually erode the sense of nationality that makes international sport so vivid, for as the lyrics of Lola say: "It's a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world."

Sport deals in simplicities, but where nationality is concerned, they no longer exist.

Sport has a deep need for an easy answer, but can only add to the complications. "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated," Confucius said. A fellow Chinese.