While many players have changed their sporting nationality in recent months (or even recent days) in order to participate in the 2026 World Cup with another national team, we have to go back to 1976 to see Fifa modify its rules on sporting nationality, after suspending a player from the Blues who had previously played in the Uruguay youth team. For half a century, players who have not played an official match with a national A team have been able to represent another country.
This is the story of Carlos Curbelo, an Uruguayan who arrived in France at the age of 17 after being spotted by AS Nancy-Lorraine in 1972. When Roger Lemerre, then the team’s central defender, left, Curbelo, an attacker trained at Atlético Cerro, was replaced as a libero. It’s a revelation. The 1.83 m player is very good with his head and is the rock of Nancy’s defense and a reference in the French championship, as the site tells us.
Blue Chronicles.
A new defender for Michel Hidalgo’s Blues
The ASNL managed to naturalize Carlos Curbelo in March 1976 in order to recruit other foreign players and, in the process, the 21-year-old defender was started by Michel Hidalgo, in the absence of Marius Trésor, for a France-Poland friendly match, on April 24, 1976 in Bollaert. There are a number of Saint-Etienne players, like captain Jean-Michel Larqué, and we also find Raymond Domenech, OL right-back. Curbelo is then the third French international coming from Uruguay, after Pierre Duhart and Hector Cazenave, two natives of Montevideo naturalized French after their arrival in Sochaux.
However, the story of Carlos Curbelo is told as far away as the small country in the north-east of Argentina and a journalist alerts Fifa of the player’s matches on the Olympic team. The central defender was banned from playing by Fifa but still came into play during a second friendly match against Hungary, in May 1976, for his last with the Blues. The defender accompanied Michel Platini, who was his teammate at Nancy until 1979. The Lorraines won the 1978 Coupe de France with a goal from “Platoche”.
The French team in 1976 (with Raymond Domenech top right).
