..Flying the flag - for another country

SEOUL -- The World Cup is unable to insulate itself from increasing globalisation - and for some players that means pulling on another country's shirt.

The first hat-trick to be scored at the World Cup was scored by Germany - but the man who notched it, Miroslav Klose, hails from Opole in Poland. Having missed out on claiming Klose's talents for themselves the Poles dug a little deeper to come up with an unlikely hero - Nigerian-born Emmanuel Olisadebe.

Nicknamed 'Czarnecki' - a Polish surname but czarny means black in Polish - the Panathinaikos striker fast-tracked to Polish citizenship by President Aleksander Kwasniewski carries his new nation's hopes into their Group D campaign which was to open Tuesday against South Korea.

"When they first came to me I thought it was a joke," Olisadebe said. "But after giving it a bit of thought I said to myself 'Why not?'.

"I never got a chance with Nigeria and Poland wanted to give me the opportunity to play international football. So it was an easy decision," says Olisadebe, who scored on his debut against Romania.

"Many people said he wasn't Polish. But he's scored in almost every match - so he won over the supporters hearts that way," laughs teammate Tomasz Waldoch. "Oli" isn't the only African to have headed out east.

Ghanaian-born Gerald Asamoah was another debutant scorer for Germany and now dreams of partnering Klose as the three-times world champions start to look ominously good.

Asamoah, the first player of black African origin ever to wear the German international shirt, hopes that coach Rudi Voller will give him his chance alongside Voller even though Carsten Jancker got the nod for the demolition job on Saudi Arabia.

Then there's Patrick Vieira, a world champion with France but whose adopted country crashed to the one of his birth, Senegal, in the opening match of the tournament.

Arsenal star Vieira is in good company with multi-ethnic France, whose skipper Marcel Desailly would once have been playing alongside Asamoah with Ghana while midfielder Claude Makelele hails from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Until only recently immigrants to Germany, Turkish "guest workers" in particular, used to complain about the near impossibility of having the Fatherland bestow citizenship upon them.

So it seems ironic that German-born Leverkusen midfielder Yildiray Basturk has opted to play for Turkey, the country of his origins.

With competition ultra-hard to break into Brazil's star-studded squad, Alessandro Santos decided to head a little further east than Olisadebe and Asamoah.

He moved to Japan.

Now, seven years after taking up residence, he has his chance with the Land of the Rising Sun having put him in their squad.

Ireland are, as ever, thankful to their usual strong contingent of English-born players - but England themselves have also got in on the act, selecting Canadian-born Owen Hargreaves - who plays his club football with Bayern Munich and towards whom the Germans also cast envious eyes.

And of course the ultimate in muti-cultural societies, the United States, have their own colourful collection of nationalities in their squad.

Defender David Regis was born in the French Caribbean department of Martinique, Pablo Mastroeni was born in Argentina, Jeff Llamosa is Colombian, veteran Jeff Agoos hails from Switzerland and Ernie Stewart is of Dutch origin.

FIFA regulations merely require a player to hold a valid passport for the country concerned and not to have represented another nation before they are free to pull on the shirt of their new home.