{"id":444940,"date":"2026-05-12T12:35:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T12:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/444940\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T12:35:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T12:35:10","slug":"i-never-applied-for-irish-citizenship-and-its-something-i-really-regretted-i-dont-want-to-go-anywhere-else-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/444940\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I never applied for Irish citizenship and it\u2019s something I really regretted. I don\u2019t want to go anywhere else now\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">In the latest interview from our League of Ireland legends series, we speak to Frenchman Pascal Vaudequin, who became a cult hero to Derry City and Shelbourne fans\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Pascal Vaudequin: 'I left my family in France very early and it was not easy. But when I came here, I learned something about Ireland, how close you can be.'\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/ba15ecea-1f98-47ab-ad39-909cfe057289.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Pascal Vaudequin: &#8216;I left my family in France very early and it was not easy. But when I came here, I learned something about Ireland, how close you can be.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">A Frenchman working in Vietnam for an Italian football club, with his adult sons on the way up their own career ladders in Dubai and China. He is much-travelled, but former footballer Pascal Vaudequin always finds his way back.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">A small part of Ireland\u2019s north-west was and still is the magnet, the draw, his focal point. It\u2019s almost four decades since a young and naive French footballer, aged 21 and with no knowledge of the real world, landed at Derry City to inject some life into his playing career, unsure what he would find.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the latest interview from our League of Ireland legends series, we speak to Frenchman Pascal Vaudequin, who&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2049,14645,14646,14642,1814,61,60,11113,25201,112],"class_list":["post-444940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-aidan-fitzmaurice","tag-bohemian-fc","tag-derry-city","tag-finn-harps","tag-france","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-shamrock-rovers","tag-shelbourne","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}