SOCCER:STOKE CITY winger Jermaine Pennant has revealed he has made contact with the FAI to make the organisation aware he is available for selection for the Republic of Ireland in the future.

Even as he broke the news in an interview on BBC local radio, the 28-year-old made no bones about the fact he would still rather play for England but, he acknowledged, that now looks increasingly unlikely to happen and he is at this stage of his career anxious to play international football and so a call from Giovanni Trapattoni would not go unanswered.

“I’m 28, I’m not getting any younger and I’d like to play international football, whether it’s with England or Ireland,” he told BBC Radio Stoke. “I’d love to play for England but it’s just never happened.

“I don’t think it’s going to happen, not because of my ability, but maybe misdemeanours in the past that have put that to a halt. They’re looking at younger, up-and-coming talent which is great for England.

“Who’s to say that Ireland can’t get to the next World Cup? If I could be a part of that with Ireland, that would be great. If I’ve got a chance to play international football with Ireland, I’m going to take it with both hands.”

If Trapattoni bites, it would make for yet another interesting twist in a career that has been anything but dull up to this point.

Pennant, whose upbringing on one of Nottingham’s most notorious estates was difficult, has never lived up the potential spotted by Arsenal when the club paid Notts County €2.3 million for him as a 15-year-old in 1999.

He has been dogged by disciplinary problems, not least the second conviction for drunk driving in 2005 that resulted in him spending a month in jail before having to play a league match for Birmingham City while wearing an electronic tagging device.

He went on to play for Liverpool and started the 2007 Champions League final against AC Milan in Athens, a game he cites as a career highlight.

He is, however, the only English player ever to play in that competition’s decider not to have been capped at senior international level and the fact he was a regular over three seasons at under-21 level, making 24 appearances, suggests he may indeed have looked like more trouble than he was worth to various senior England managers.

Over the last couple of years he has attracted almost as much media attention for his personal life as for his footballing activities. A spell in Spain that included a suspension by Real Zaragoza for consistently poor time-keeping ended with a widely-publicised yarn about him leaving an expensive sports car in a railway station car-park and apparently forgetting about it for several months.

In his BBC interview, he says a friend was supposed to collect the car.

For all of that, when Pennant plays well he looks a very capable player if not quite the world beater he once threatened to develop into during his early days at Arsenal.

He has pace and can cross the ball well but he can drift badly out of games while his off-the-field behaviour remains a major issue even if he claims that the birth of his son, Trey, has had a settling effect upon him.

Whether Trapattoni is sufficiently impressed to hand him a call-up remains to be seen. The 28-year-old plays in a position in which the Italian already has a few options and he is certainly not markedly better than the leading contenders for the spot at present with Damien Duff, Aiden McGeady, Liam Lawrence and Stephen Hunt all having won praise from Trapattoni over the past couple of years.

It could be, in fact, that he has also timed his decision poorly with Séamus Coleman’s form this year at Everton appearing to increase the competition slightly on that flank. Pennant has rather more first team experience under his belt than the Donegalman and he does play regularly at present which is likely to endear him to the manager.

However, Trapattoni’s handling of James McCarthy, a Scottish-born player who has long wanted to play for Ireland, and Jamie O’Hara, someone who raised the possibility of a switch from England rather earlier in his senior career, tends to suggest that it might be some time and quite a few misunderstandings down the road before we see this latest convert to the Irish cause get to line out in green.