You forget the massive Polish immigration to the Ruhr area in the late 19th century during Germany's industrialization. Lots of people living in that area (and others) today have Polish sounding names. Give it up, your first post was utterly foolish/pointless.
You wrote:
“You forget the massive Polish immigration to the Ruhr area in the late 19th century during Germany’s industrialization.”
I forgot nothing.
“Lots of people living in that area (and others) today have Polish sounding names. Give it up, your first post was utterly foolish/pointless.”
No, actually my post was perfectly sound and had a good point - Germany is much different than it once was. Take the two players mentioned, for instance, Podolski is a Polish born man who moved to Germany when he was two. He still holds Polish citizenship but travels with a German passport. Klose has a German last name, a slavic first name and was also born in Poland. His father was ethnically German (he might not have even known German before immigrating. That was very common when I lived in Germany and dealt with immigrants who used the “Right of Return” laws (if I recall, that’s Article 116 of the Bundesrepublik law code) to immigrate to Germany as Aussiedler or Spätaussiedler. Many of these people were Heimatvertriebene.
Both of the men in question are Poles by birth and only one of them is half-German by ethnicity.
I suspect very soon most of the Irish national team will have Polish names.