Gunnar Nielsen’s Premier League career was brief.
Extremely brief, in fact: it lasted 17 minutes. The goalkeeper was introduced as a late substitute for Manchester City against Arsenal in 2010 after Shay Given had aggravated a shoulder injury he picked up a week earlier when diving in vain for Paul Scholes’s late winner in the Manchester derby.
But it was a big deal back home. Those 17 minutes represented the first — and only — time a player from the Faroe Islands had played in the Premier League. It was such a big deal that a local radio station couldn’t even wait until the game had finished to call his brother for some reaction. Happily, Nielsen kept a clean sheet, avoiding the decidedly awkward prospect of his brother having to offer some live, on-air comment on an embarrassing blunder.
“He was so nervous he couldn’t say a word,” Nielsen says now. “He just gave the phone to my sister-in-law.”
Nielsen is part of an unusual little club of players, a group that was joined recently by new City signing Abdukodir Khusanov, the defender from Uzbekistan: they are two of 18 men to be the only players from their respective countries to make an appearance in the Premier League.
Neilsen made his only Premier League appearance in April 2010 (Neil Tingle – PA Images via Getty Images)
So as you can imagine, it was pretty big news in the Faroes when Nielsen made his appearance. TV and radio coverage was a given, but his almost literal 15 minutes of fame was the talk of the town. “I spoke to a bouncer at a nightclub who I knew,” Nielsen says. “He said the only thing everybody spoke about on that Saturday evening was how I made my appearance in the Premier League.
“It was such a big thing when it happened. I remember people were sending me pictures and texting me and calling me — to this day I meet people who still say they remember where they were at that exact time when I came on.”
Khusanov is the second player to join the club this season, after Ipswich Town striker Ali Al-Hamadi became the first Iraqi to grace the division when he came on in the opening game of the season against Liverpool.
For the sake of completeness, the others are: Victor Wanyama (Kenya), Henrikh Mkhitaryan (Armenia), Onel Hernandez (Cuba), Junior Firpo (Dominican Republic), Nathaniel Mendez-Laing (Guatemala), Danny Higginbotham (Gibraltar), Ryan Donk (Suriname), Ali Al-Habsi (Oman), Jordi Amat (Indonesia), Hamza Choudhury (Bangladesh), Dylan Kerr (Malta), Mbwana Samatta (Tanzania), Frederic Nimani (Central African Republic), Neil Etheridge (Philippines) and Zesh Rehman (Pakistan).
By definition, the nations on that list are not traditional football powerhouses. Some of the players had a slight leg-up, given that they were born and raised in bigger or more recognisable football environments, but played for another country due to a familial connection. Amat, Choudhury, Rehman, Etheridge, Hernandez, Firpo, Mendez-Laing, Higginbotham and Donk fall into that category.
But some of the others grew up in surroundings where there simply weren’t any role models to show them the path to one of Europe’s big leagues. They are trailblazers.
“You need to see someone that’s done it before,” Nielsen tells The Athletic. “We’re closely connected to Denmark, so you’re looking up to players from there, but (not having a Faroese example) did not make it easier. There hadn’t been anyone in the Premier League from the Faroe Islands, and even though there were some young players who had been on youth contracts at some Premier League clubs, there wasn’t anyone to look up to in that sense.”
Wanyama didn’t have a compatriot to show him the path to the Premier League either but he was lucky in that he, at least, did have some more immediate role models, such as his brother, McDonald Mariga, who joined Parma in Serie A when Wanyama was 16. Before that, Wanyama followed Mariga to Helsingborgs in Sweden, briefly returning home when the elder brother went to Italy, before properly starting his European journey with Beerschot, in Belgium. It also didn’t hurt that his father, Noah, played for and coached Nairobi-based side AFC Leopards.
Wanyama playing for Tottenham in 2019 (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
“I grew up in a football family,” Wanyama tells The Athletic. “I used to watch the Premier League — I grew up watching those games. When I was 11, I was already dreaming about being there one day. I loved Roy Keane and Paul Scholes.
“My father was a coach, my brother played: it was something very deep. It was in our blood. I wanted to play on the biggest stage. I was aware the Premier League was the toughest league in the world. I knew it would be tough to get into, which motivated me.”
Etheridge’s situation was slightly different. Born and raised in England, the goalkeeper qualified to play for the Philippines through his mother. He would travel to the Philippines fairly regularly growing up but, for various reasons, didn’t go back for years. Then, at 18, his former team-mates in the Chelsea youth team and Filipino internationals James and Phil Younghusband suggested him for a place in the squad too. He made his debut in 2008, has clocked up more than 80 caps and was named national team captain in 2022.
Neil Etheridge in action for Cardiff against Manchester City in 2019 (Oli Scarff / AFP)
“I just felt a connection with the country and the people,” Etheridge says from Thailand, where he is now playing. “The Philippines is an extremely proud country. The culture and blood runs through you. I was only 18, but I saw a chance to make a change in a country that is not necessarily football-orientated. Basketball is the No 1 sport. Back then, football wasn’t really a sport that was recognised.”
He’s not kidding. They had sunk to 195th in the world around the time Etheridge was first called up, and had little to no record in international competition. Their highest ranking in the intervening years of 111 might not seem great, but they qualified for the Asian Cup for the first time in 2019 and made it to the second round of qualifying for the 2014 World Cup, again the first time the team had gone that far.
Etheridge achieved most of this before playing in the Premier League for the first time, eventually doing so in 2017 after winning promotion with Cardiff. “It was a massive deal,” he says. “Although it wasn’t as big as if a Filipino played in the NBA, and Manny Pacquiao is the No 1 sportsperson in the country by a country mile. I was probably more recognised as the first South East Asian player to play in the Premier League, rather than the first Filipino.
“I’ve been able to do a lot of first. In 2010, we reached the semi-finals of the South East Asian Cup (AFF Cup) for the first time and that was when football blew up in the Philippines. Even now, 15 years later, it’s still in infant stages, but it’s something I’m proud to be a part of, to put football on the map in the country.”
National identity can be a slightly complicated, non-binary and sometimes fluid thing, so it’s worth offering some parameters: the players are defined as being ‘from’ their particular country either if they were born there and haven’t represented another country, or if they have represented that country at full international level.
There are some curiosities on the list. The Premier League has seen several players who were born in Suriname and went on to represent the Netherlands (Regi Blinker, Edgar Davids, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink), but Donk, the only player to represent Suriname, was born in the Netherlands.
A few on the list weren’t classed as being from their respective nations while playing in the Premier League. Higginbotham played a few games for Gibraltar, but those were a long time after his Southampton/Sunderland/Stoke City pomp. Mendez-Laing’s debut for Guatemala came when he was in League One with Derby, a few years after his top-flight days with Cardiff.
Danny Higginbotham back in his playing days for Stoke City in 2010 (Mike Egerton/PA Images via Getty Images)
Then there are the grey areas, such as former Brighton & Hove Albion midfielder Mahmoud Dahoud, who is counted on some lists as Syria’s sole representative. He was born in Syria and raised in Germany, for whom he played two friendlies in 2020 so was thus regarded as German while in England. However, in 2024, he switched allegiance to the nation of his birth and was called up to Syria’s squad… only to pull out before actually playing. He may still represent them in the future, but we’re not counting him for now.
Then there’s Equatorial Guinea. Emilio Nsue, who was born and raised in Spain and made four appearances for Middlesbrough in the Premier League, played 45 times for Equatorial Guinea between 2013 and 2024 and won the Golden Boot at the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations. However, he might not count, as in 2024 FIFA ruled he had been ineligible the whole time.
Back in 2013, the Equatoguinean Football Federation applied to their Spanish counterparts for Nsue to switch nationalities (he had made several competitive appearances for various Spain youth teams), but to say the least there were some irregularities with the process. They defaulted two 2014 World Cup qualifying games due to Nsue’s ineligibility, but they kept picking him anyway, and did so at various intervals over the following decade. It genuinely seems that FIFA only noticed due to his heroics at AFCON, at which point they declared his whole international career null and void.
So…does he count? Are we getting into a weird, metaphysical area by acting as if Nsue’s international appearances literally never happened, rather than administratively never happened? If so Pedro Obiang, the only other Equatorial Guinea international, becomes the 19th individual on this list. But for now, we’ll go with tangible reality and credit Equatorial Guinea with two Premier League players.
Of course, the Premier League is not the pinnacle for everyone. It’s not necessarily the case that every player slept on Barclays bed sheets and their only desire as a kid was to play in England.
Take Wanyama, for example. “It was a bigger deal to play for Celtic,” he says, “because it was the team I grew up supporting. Particularly in the Glasgow derby.”
For most of these players, playing in the Premier League was a source of personal pride, but the hope is they can be the inspiration and role model that they didn’t have when they were younger.
“Without wanting to blow my own trumpet,” says Etheridge, “if it wasn’t for me and the success I’ve had, there would be a lot of football players who wouldn’t have had a career in the game. A lot of people wouldn’t even have known that the Philippines had a team, if it wasn’t for the likes of myself, and the success I had later in my career, playing in the Premier League, being able to really enhance our national team. There are a lot of people around the world who have decided to play for the Philippines because they now know what the Philippines national team is.”
Wanyama adds: “I’m proud if I have made young players dream, to believe in themselves that they could play in the Premier League one day. Now everyone wants to be there, and they know the door is open to them. They believe they can do it too.”
(Top photos: Getty Images)
