Scotland's manager Craig Levein, revealed why Mikel Arteta will not be able to be capped by England manager Fabio Capello.

According to Levein, the Home Countries, including England, have a gentleman's agreement on the capping of players in their territories. Apparently, only those who have a family bloodline or who have completed five years' education in one country can represent that nation at international level.

"The way I understand it, the home associations have an agreement," said Levein in quotes reported by the Guardian.

"I'll tell you how I know. I tried to get Shola Ameobi at Newcastle a while back [to play for Scotland], because he has not played for England but has lived in the UK and has a British passport, so I thought he might be able to play for Scotland.

"But we had changed the rules."

The manager's comments have also been backed up by the Scottish FA, but he admitted he also found the rule obstructive to his needs for their national side.

"I just used Ameobi as an example because he was somebody who had a British passport but it fell down because he didn't have the educational qualification.

"I understand that it's a newsworthy story but I don't want to go into enormous detail about Arteta.

"All I'm saying to you is, the way I understand it, they can't cap him."

"From my point of view, my job isn't to decide who is Scottish, it's to win football matches. Take away the rest of it and keep my mind on that one thing, and I would be happy to play anybody.

"I mean, it depends what you think about the current grandparent rule. A lot of guys I played with for Scotland were effectively English. So what's the difference?"