Football: Party across the pond for British-based internationals: Trevor Haylett on the players taking a taste of home to the finals

YOU come across them in the east and the north-west, the south and in that outpost where Scotland stretches out towards the North Sea. The footballers of foreign descent who make a handsome living in the British game have, for too long, been wearing handsome smiles that gloatingly declare: 'We're going to the World Cup - you're not, you're not.'

The recruits to Jack Charlton's green army have not been alone in their dressing-room glee. As the barriers have come down across Europe, so the gates have opened to embrace those players who gamble on a career away from their homeland, and become true internationalists as a result.

Dimitri Kharin, Chelsea's Russian goalkeeper, and Boncho Genchev of Bulgaria and Ipswich, are two who have travelled and triumphed. For Efan Ekoku, Manchester-born, his passport to America came only a few months after he first realised there was an opportunity to represent his father's country, Nigeria.

It was just a year ago that Ekoku took the step up from the Second Division to the Premier League. A topsy-turvy first season with Norwich City, which left him immobilised through injury for much of the time, ended with him still unsure of his club place, but with the exciting prospect that in Boston a week today he could be facing Diego Maradona and Argentina.

Ekoku made his debut in the African Nations' Cup quarter-final, but was substituted after half-time and Nigeria went on to lift the trophy without him. Strikers of the calibre of Rashidi Yekini, Africa's footballer of the year who scored eight times in the USA '94 qualifying series, and Emmanuel Amunike, who claimed both the goals which beat Zambia to that continent's most cherished prize, guarantee him fierce competition.

'Nigeria have a very strong squad and it is an honour to be part of it,' said Ekoku, who alerted the extrovert national coach, Clemens Westerhof, with a four- goal spree at Everton in September. 'I want Maradona to be there, if only because I'd like to play against him.'

Kharin should be assured of his place with Russia after a sequence of outstanding club displays. Confident, composed and with the agility to reach the unreachable, his only regret as he prepares to help his country through their West Coast grouping is that Andrei Kanchelskis, his great friend at Manchester United, has declined to join him because of a dispute with the coach, Pavel Sadyrin.

Kharin, a 1992 signing from CSKA Moscow, is one of four British-based goalkeepers who have a place this week among football's elite. At Aberdeen, Theo Snelders has been top cat for several seasons and, in 1989, was voted Scotland's player of the year by his fellow professionals. A one-cap wonder seemed the likely epitaph for his international stint with the Netherlands when he withdrew the day before a crucial qualifying tie against West Germany for the Italy World Cup, blaming a crippling attack of nerves. He sat on the bench, and his reluctant replacement was forced to play through pain.

Snelders has since returned to the fold, and established himself as the deputy to Ed de Goey. A second link with the Dutch squad was secured last week, when their flying winger, Bryan Roy, left the training headquarters to agree to sign for Nottingham Forest for pounds 2.5m from Foggia, of Italy.

The promising Luton shot-stopper, Juergen Sommer, edged out Kasey Keller, his international and First Division rival at Millwall, for the final place in the United States squad. Rated ahead of him is Tony Meola, who, after Italia '90, had a spell with Watford and Brighton without making the grade, and Brad Friedel, whom Kevin Keegan has just added to Newcastle's burgeoning wage bill.

Two other faces in the ranks of the host nation will be familiar to English viewers. John Harkes is on another extension to an already long season which, at the end of last month, included the agony of First Division play-off failure with Derby County. Roy Wegerle will be fresh and raring to go after a year virtually wasted on the Coventry treatment table.

Genchev has been unable to capitalise on a successful first season at Portman Road, and was mostly a substitute last term, a role that looks likely to be his again for the next four weeks.

Non-players but still central to events in the States include a second English manager in Roy Hodgson, who is in charge of Switzerland. Keeping a vigilant eye on the proceedings will be the referees, Philip Don from Middlesex and Les Mottram from Lanarkshire, and the linesman, Roy Pearson from County Durham.