Over the last few months, it had started to seem more likely that Jack Grealish was going to choose his birth nation of England over Ireland, who he had solely lined out for at international level.
The Aston Villa attacking midfielder is not the first dual nationality player who has had to make the difficult choice about who to represent at senior level.
Anwar El Ghazi
The Ajax attacker is one of the most promising talents in world football, winning the club's Talent of the Year award for 2015 and scoring seven goals in the first six matches of this season.
El Ghazi is born in the Netherlands but is of Moroccan descent and had to make a choice about who to represent at international level with both nations keen on bringing him on board.
In the end, the 20-year-old winger chose the Netherlands after plenty of advice, including from Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo, as he recounted to the Ajax club website:
"I have thought about it for a long time. My parents, my family, my personal trainer and also Cristiano Ronaldo have advised me. I have included everything in my choice."
"It came up with Ronaldo. He asked how I stood on the Netherlands. He said if he were me, he would opt for the Netherlands. He said I had to decide it myself and that people always have an opinion.
"Choose Netherlands and Moroccans will say I'm not a real Moroccan, opt for Morocco then the Dutch say 'Hey, you're born and raised here, what the hell is that?'
"I'm going to do my best. I'm going to give everything for the country because I was born and raised here."
Medhi Benatia
French-born, the Bayern Munich defender was regarded as one of the world's best defenders while at Roma a couple of seasons ago.
Certainly, he likely would have been in the France squad for the last World Cup, but for one catch: he is a Morocco international.
Born at the same time as the fabled French generation of 1987, including Samir Nasri, Karim Benzema, Jeremy Menez and Hatem Ben Arfa, the player who was born in the Paris suburbs, started representing Morocco in 2008 before he reached prominence in the French second division, despite having represented France briefly at underage level.
The inference in some quarters is playing time was on his mind at a time when he had not yet established himself at a high level.
He was also eligible for Algeria through his mother.
Paul McGrath touched on the issue of playing time when he spoke to Off The Ball about the Grealish situation earlier this year:
Kevin Prince Boateng
The last two World Cups have seen Germany and Ghana placed in the same groups, which means the Boateng brothers have had to come face to face on opposites of the international divide.
Bayern Munich defender Jerome has always represented his birth nation of Germany from underage up to winning a World Cup winners medal, whereas Kevin-Prince took the opposite route.
Born in Berlin like his half-brother, Kevin-Prince, also represented Germany at underage level. But in 2009, he informed the German setup that he was not interested in senior call-ups and after receiving a Ghanaaian passport the following spring, he went to the 2010 World Cup with Ghana, before a brief retirement from international soccer which conveniently ended just before a 2014 World Cup appearance which saw him kicked out of the squad.
Last year, he told FIFA Magazine that he feels "increasingly Ghanaaian", which does not explain why he made the decision in the first place, but it may have been something to do with the previous bad-boy image he held in Germany.
In an interview with the same magazine in 2010 as that year's World Cup closed in, he made the point that: "I really enjoyed playing for Germany. It was recognition for all the work I put in, and the German FA really helped me develop as a player. But I made mistakes. I had a feeling the German FA wasn’t prepared to forgive me and I wouldn’t be given another chance for the national team. I delivered for my clubs, but I was never mentioned in connection with the Germany set-up. By comparison, I could have turned out for Ghana at the 2006 World Cup and at this year’s Africa Cup of Nations. I was still holding out hopes of being picked for Germany and playing alongside my brother Jerome, so I turned Ghana down. But now I’ve made a rational decision, with my head rather than my heart."
While he certainly feels Ghanaaian now (at least until the World Cup 2014 fallout), it is fairly clear that Germany would have been his first choice had they called him up before he made his full Ghana debut.
Nuri Sahin
Germany has a sizeable Turkish minority and some have chosen to represent their birth place, while others have gone for the country of their parents.
While Mesut Ozil and Ilkay Gundogan have chosen Germany, former Liverpool midfielder Nuri Sahin and Bayer Leverkusen set piece expert Hakan Calhanoglu have gone for Turkey, despite both being German-born.
Neither player ever played for Germany at underage, with both opting for Turkey from U16 levels onwards.
For Sahin, who plays for Borussia Dortmund having returned from spells with Real Madrid and Liverpool, it is down to sentiment: "I was actually born in Germany but feel more Turkish."
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