Tom Powell
GIBRALTAR must be ‘more open-minded’ if they are to ever overcome international footballing misery, according to former player Danny Higginbotham.
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The no-nonsense defender has called for a return to the policy of recruiting overseas players with Gibraltar links to boost the home-grown crop.
Higginbotham, who was himself called up for Gibraltar due to his maternal grandmother – retired last year after playing in the side’s first three games.
“The population of Gibraltar is only about 28,000 but now, for whatever reason, they seem to have become more closed-minded and they just include players from Gibraltar,” he said on Sky Sports News.
“They were very open minded at first and had a lot of players involved from England.”
“It is all about them opening up again,” he added.
The Gibraltar team went down 4-0 to Ireland and 8-1 to Poland in the most recent round of European qualifiers.
And Higginbotham believes if the management were to scour European leagues for eligible players, they would find many who would ‘jump at the opportunity’ to turn the side’s fortunes around.
[yop_poll id=”5″]
I am all in favour of the best players available to play for Gibraltar wherever they live ,as long that we dont forget our local players, all other countries do it
I think we are doing just fine with the youngsters being introduced in the squad recently, we can already notice some postive changes in the way we play and with less of those players featuring in the squad, so i think we should give Jeff more time he seems to know what he’s doing. I’m not against adding eligible players from abroad that can bring some experience, however i still think the team is playing better than when they were part of the squad.