THREE different Spains play a form of international football this week and those concerned with the cluttering of the calendar should be warned there may be more of this to come. Less than 24 hours after Sweden took on Spain in last night’s European Championship qualifier, Catalonia face the Basque Country at the Nou Camp. It is billed locally as an “international”, it’s officially a friendly, but has been earmarked as a key date in what is becoming a vigorous lobby for these partially autonomous regions to be recognised as independent sporting nations.

A good crowd is anticipated at the Nou Camp and the standard should be about as a high as a mid-table first division La Liga match, as that is where most of the players work, except for those from clubs like Ajax and Monaco. Were it not for Spain’s call on six or seven Catalans and Basques, the level would be still higher. Arsenal’s Cesc Fabregas is a Catalan, so is Liverpool’s Luis Garcia. So are Barcelona’s Carles Puyol, Xavi and goalkeeper Victor Valdes. Indeed, at full strength, Catalonia would be a good match for Spain, especially a Spain without their Catalans and Basques. A Basque side would be shaped around Liverpool’s Xabi Alonso. Those players who are current Spain internationals might or may not favour the idea of independent national teams, but in the meantime know that only Spain’s jersey is going to take them to World Cups and European championships, and appreciate that the environment of the Spanish squad would not be the wisest place to turn radical about it.

Some of the noise around this fixture, though, has been radical. In Catalonia, the lobby to be recognised as independent is vocal, well-funded and emotional. Witness the controversial TV advert that has been running on Catalan channels for the last fortnight showing a group of schoolboys playing football in a park, each in a replica national jersey. It starts sweetly but turns nasty when the child in a Spain jersey tells another boy in a Catalan shirt he’s not welcome to join in. Spain’s centre-right opposition party, the PP, moved for the ad to be banned. The Catalan authorities initially deemed that it could be shown and found immediate support from the most vocal of the professional players involved in today’s match.

The Barcelona full-back, Oleguer Presas, said: “There’s no reason for people to feel scandalised by an advert that reflects reality. It is a legitimate desire to have your own national team and this is the right time to have an open debate about why we haven’t got them.” Catalan and Basque XIs have been playing annual friendlies — usually against a visiting nation — for a few years, but the significance of today’s match is that they are playing each other for the first time in 30 years and on a designated date in the Fifa calendar for full internationals.

And their cause has just found inspiration from an unlikely source: a large rock. Gibraltar last Thursday presented their case to have a national team to Uefa and have an authorisation from the Court of Arbitration for Sport for doing so.

Fifa’s working principle on these issues is that to have a national side, you need to be a sovereign state, with a seat at the UN. But vagaries do exist, like Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

“I’ve yet to see a single real political argument why sports people can’t choose freely who they play for,” says Oleguer. His point is simple: Obliging Catalans and Basques to play for Spain is like telling Barry Ferguson, Craig Bellamy or David Healy they can only play international football for a Britain team called England.

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