Time to retire international retirement

I had to laugh when I read Albion keeper Dean Kiely was back with Ireland after announcing his 'retirement' from international duty five years ago.

Sorry? Retired from representing your country? Selected as one of the best in your field for your country, and you don't want to play anymore?

How can anyone NOT want to represent their country.

Having been born in England, of Polish parents, I would have savoured every moment of representing either country had I been good enough, whether at football or, say, synchronised fence painting.

Paul Scholes, Alan Shearer, Jamie Carragher and many more have gone down this route. They should hang their heads in shame.

If your country - be it England, Ireland or Azerbaijan - want you, then it should be considered an honour and a privilege to represent that nation. I don't buy this excuse about players wanting to extend domestic careers or spend more time with families. Or, in the shameful Carragher's case, because a manager prefers someone else in your position and you don't like it. Get over it.

Footballers, hardly nine-to-five workaholics, retire aged 35-40. So the 'spending more time with family' doesn't do it for me. Some never go near a football pitch again. At best they will have 50 years to spend with their loved ones. Most working folk get a third of that time. And without the wealth.

Wearing the national shirt should be one of the proudest moments of any footballer's career. Never a chore.

Some people don't know how lucky they are.

*By the way, for those people wondering whether Leon Beenhakker's comments might have been lost in translation... well they weren't. In fact, the comments lost a little impact (if that's at all possible) when translated from Polish into English due to the context in which certain words that he'd used can be applied in Polish.

Even so it still makes you wonder how somebody with such an impressive footballing CV and pedigree can make such incorrect assumptions about another football team's style of play. Why interfere?

His comments ensure that there will be few Albion fans cheering on the Poles when they kick off their Euro 2008 campaign.