Cap This for Experience

Reading about Duffers losing his 100th cap and remembering that Schwarzer and Riise had just recently had milestones, I had a look at the squad as a whole. Among them 13 of of our players have almost a thousand full International caps - that's an impressive amount of experience.


Karagounis 120
Riise 106
Schwarzer 101
Duff 100*
Hughes 81
Berbatov 78
Hangeland 78
Grygera 65
Diarra 64
Davies 58
Baird 58
Ruiz 46
Kelly 31

And there is the odd one and two that Dejagah and Riether have.

Doubt if there are many, if any, teams that can match that.



EDIT: Duff 100* - confirmed that Duffers has had his 100th cap re-instated

 

It also shows what an aged team we have.

 

I think that's great, but it would be more impressive if hundreds of those caps were from Germany, Italy and Spain. Still, it's a neat accomplishment.

 

Bloody miserable lot!

To have so many internationals in the side is superb, yes we have a few old boys but the experience will definitely benefit the growing amount of youngsters in the first team.

 

Quite right, Bidley. And no one has mentioned Kacaniklic: now a full Swedish international.

 

With ages... a very experienced team but also an old team...

Karagounis 120 (35)
Riise 106 (31)
Schwarzer 101 (39)
Duff 100* (33)
Hughes 81 (32)
Berbatov 78 (31)
Hangeland 78 (31)
Grygera 65 (32)
Diarra 64 (31)
Davies 58 (32)
Baird 58 (30)
Ruiz 46 (27)
Kelly 31 (29)

 

As I said to Bandit the other day, "never mind the width feel the quality"

 

I think our grounds keeper has a dozen caps from the Faroe Islands. Don't forget about him.

 

That's what I tell Mrs Bidley

 

Also, let's not forget Kara is a European Championship winner.

 

One that got away, Neil Etheridge. I had completely forgotten that our (4th choice) keeper had been capped for Indonesia and certainly didn't realise that it had been 37 times . Here is an extract from an interview with a local reporter before his debut for Bristol Rovers at the weekend -

"Neil Etheridge can finally add a league debut to his THIRTY-SEVEN international caps. Enfield-born keeper Etheridge, 22, has signed a one month loan deal from Fulham and kept a clean sheet in his first Rovers appearance, but he has already notched up a good deal of experience playing for the Phillipines. Former Chelsea youth prospect Etheridge explained:

"My mum is Filipino which allows me to qualify and I've played in some pretty big fixtures for them since I was eighteen. We played two semi finals of the South East Asian Cup in Jakarta against Indonesia in 2010 because we didn't have the facilities in the Phillipines at that time. There were 85,000 at the first leg and 100,000 in the second leg. Our support was just family and friends - about ten people! There aren't many stadiums anywhere that can hold those numbers. It was frightening, but a great experience."

Etheridge was supported in his debut by best pal, injured Manchester United and England defender Chris Smalling, and Etheridge said:

"People take different paths in life, this is mine and I'll take it. I was on the bench for the majority of last season with Fulham. The season before I had slight knock backs with injuries. Now is the time to go out on loan to gain experience and I'll grab it with both hands to help Bristol Rovers as much as I can."