I'D like to announce I'm retiring from international football.

I might as well as everybody else seems to be doing it.

It's the new football fashion to want to give up the honour - or is it the inconvenience - of playing for your country.

I blame Alan Shearer for starting this wave of retirements which have included Andy Cole, Steve Staunton, Niall Quinn, Stig Tofting, Jay Jay Okocha, Henrik Larsson and Gabriel Batistuta while Jason McAteer's still thinking about it.

The way it's going the respective football associations are going to have to set up pension schemes.

This phrase 'international retirement' is the latest addition to the footballers' vocabulary used by those who wish to express a diplomatic way of saying they no longer want to play for their country.

International football is purely voluntary and the players who have announced they no longer want to be involved have done so for the valid reasons of spending more time with their families and prolonging their professional careers.

But the increasing number of players who are turning their backs on their countries while they are in the prime of their footballing life is a worrying trend and devalues international football.

The word before the World Cup was that a successful tournament for the USA could see soccer finally starting to threaten the big four sports of basketball, baseball, American football and ice hockey in the popularity stakes.

Reaching the last eight constitutes success and yet their quarter final against local rivals Mexico was watched by an estimated 60 million Mexicans and only three million Americans.

Even if they go on to win the World Cup the resulting upsurge in interest would be just another false dawn because in America they are not just only interested in winners but in winners in sports they like and that doesn't include soccer.