In the wake of Jack Grealish declaring that he will play his international football for England last month, attentions quickly turned to an Arsenal youngster in a strikingly similar situation to the Aston Villa playmaker.
Having represented Ireland as a schoolboy, Crowley switched his allegiance to represent the England U17s, and despite earning rave reviews from within Arsenal's youth setup and the manager who had him on loan at Barnsley, Martin O'Neill remained confident that Crowley could still end up opting for the green jersey, and even had a chat with the lad's father:
I spoke to his father and we had a very civil conversation. He’s a very, very pleasant man.
Of course you have meetings and all of that but you would want, as best as possible, for a player not to be forced into something that he might regret further on. You want the decision to come from the player, from his family, from his heart.
The hopes of seeing Crowley choose Ireland were dealt a bit of a blow today as Crowley scored an impressive solo goal against Japan U19. After the English defence cleared a corner, Crowley launched a one-man counter-attack and carried the ball all the way to the opposition box where he calmly slotted past the keeper:
Daniel Crowley scores his first goal in an England shirt... pic.twitter.com/FbTAg3vAsW
— TerryAFC (@TerryAFCx) November 15, 2015
Of course Grealish himself played for the Irish U21 side before switching, so there is still a possibility of Crowley representing Ireland one day, but it looks to us that he's happy in the English set-up, and fair play to him.
Hopefully whatever happens we don't get a long drawn out saga that ends with a young lad taking an unneccessary amount of stick on social media because of the nationality he identifies with.
That said, he looks like a cracking young player. A shame really.
via 101greatgoals.com
