text: why are football teams full of foreign players? if you play for england why are you not born english?   players who play for any national team (such as england) have to be a citizen of that country, and not have played for any other countries.  so for the england team, they are all english, and all born in england, apart from owen hargreaves, who is canadian, but because of passports and parents' nationalites could have chosen to play for england, germany or canada, and i think scotland or wales if he had chosen. unfortunatley for england, he chose to play for them. he really is terrible!  if you mean english league teams, then the laws about these are dictated by eu law - any citizen of any eu country is free to work their chosen trade in any other eu country. this is the same for all eu countries and leagues (spain, italy, france etc etc).  each league has slightly different rules for non-eu players, depending on their countries labour laws and local decisions, but in england i don't think teams can field more than 3 non-eu passport holders in a team, and these palyers must play in a certain number of games each season, or their work permits are withdrawn.  there has been controversy in the past with football agents getting portugese passports for brazilians - allowing them to play in the eu without the restrictions that normally apply to brazilian players.