Jack Wilshere is wrong - Mo Farah is proof we should embrace Britain's diverse society - Telegraph English society has altered dramatically in the past 30 years, as the London Olympics affirmed, with great, rousing triumphs for Mo Farah (Somali-born) and Jessica Ennis (who is mixed race), and a melting-pot audience who displayed a modern, nuanced sense of nationality and background. Even the FA admits that English football has watched with folded arms while other sports trawled outside the old pools. No one is saying England jerseys should be available to anyone who fancies a commercial leg-up and a higher sporting profile: a motive we see sometimes in England's cricket and rugby teams. Footballers cannot be allowed to pick from a menu of flags of convenience. But the current narrow system is needlessly self-limiting and parochial. It excludes many immigrant communities, for example, and binds England to a level of piety not shown in Germany, France or Spain, who have just recruited Diego Costa from Brazil. Spain is the most richly stocked nation in world football. Yet even they apply pragmatism. Germany have reached a hand into their Polish and Turkish immigrant communities. All across England there are national groups who might want to see a son in Roy Hodgson's team. Are we to say that someone can come to this country at eight-years-old can work, go to school and contribute to the general happiness of this land but not play for England? Wilshere's point is about residency, and the idea that living in a country for five years makes you a citizen in the sporting sense. You can see what he is driving at. But the Fifa regulations state that a player is eligible if "he has lived continuously for at least five years after reaching the age of 18 on the territory of the relevant Association." This is no free licence. There are checks and balances in the system, even if some players appear to float around at will. The real culprit is a thoroughly anachronistic gentlemen's agreement between the home unions in 1993 to opt out of the residency rule. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all agreed to be high-minded (or discriminatory, depending on your view). Talk about beggars being choosers. None of those four associations is in a position to reject available talent, assuming it fits international criteria. The FA finally wants to modernise its talent identification process. No longer can a country that allows its top league to be staffed with 67 per cent foreign players adopt a Little Englander approach to its national set-up. The feeling engendered by London 2012 is here to stay, and should be encouraged by our biggest sport, which has made no inroads, for example, into the country's large Asian population. Each case should be judged on its merits, but an escape from the St George chauvinism is entirely overdue, which the best minds at the FA understand. This is not dilution, it is regeneration, in keeping with the way Britain has evolved. According to Wilshere's logic, Farah, an Arsenal fan, would not make Hodgson's team because he was not born in England. Imagine telling him that as he paraded his 10,000m and 5,000m Olympic golds, in the heart of London, the city that opened its arms to him, and which he calls home.