Welsh players

Hi fellow Bluebirds,

Somehow I stumbled upon an academic report into the subject of 'Cardiff City and Welsh national identity'. I've no idea how I found it but (link at the bottom) it got me into thinking about Welsh players. I remember when home a year or so back I read in the Echo a piece about our academy finding the best Welsh players and allowing our club to, in effect, be a breeding ground for the national team. I thought, seeing as we are waiting for news on signings etc we debate whether this is at all important? From my point of view I think it is important we have a scouting network and academy powerful, attractive and influential enough that we never miss out on a Gareth Bale, Ryan Giggs or a Craig Bellamy ever again. However, I'm not sure I fully buy an idea I have heard that we as a club should think of ourselves as a Barcelona, representing Catalonia and finding Catalonian players or a Bilbao and fielding Basque players etc.

How important are Welsh players to you all? At the end of the season I saw we were being linked to every Welsh player likely to move (Robson-Kanu, Wayne Hennessey etc.) is this lazy journalism or a reflection of what many would like to see happen?

How important is the Welshness of the club to you all? Would this even stop at having more Welsh players playing?

I thought it a decent time to have a chat about it all. Apologies if it has been done a million times but I only recently signed up to the forum so please humour me.

The essay/report/analysis/whatever it is called:

http://www.writenow.ac.uk/oldsite/QRSS/ ... 057-68.pdf

p.s. it seems to have been written a year or two back, maybe 3

In an ideal world, we'd have a few more Welsh players in the squad; Cardiff is a Wales based team after all. Unfortunately though, modern football has gone in such a way that it's not uncommon for a team to have 11 players that aren't from that neck of the woods, or even that country. I'd like to think though, that the academy is developing local talent for the future - whether it be Cardiff youngsters or just Welsh yoingsters in general.

if they're good enough then get them in. but yes i think id feel a better connection if we had more Welsh players. id also like to think that as we progress as a club in the future that more top Welsh players would actually want to come to us.

We play Bilbao in pre season. They will only play Basque players not even Spanish.

We are working on the scouting mission for young players and MM is supporting it.

Declan John should be tested this season imo.

People go on their to young, look at Luke Shaw.

There's no point playing welsh players if they aren't good enough. We are not playing to represent Wales.