There is a carpetbagging mentality in Europe, but I thought it mostly permeated the national soccer teams. Seems like it's now in Eurobasketball as well.
Reminds me of the German national soccer team, which has a variety of players who are nationals of other countries. One of their players, Podolski, is Polish. A few years ago (I think during the 2010 World Cup actually), I had some of my older relatives over my place, from my father's side of the family. My paternal Grandmother was Polish, and one of her younger brothers was my guest. I had the soccer game on, and Germany was playing somebody. Podolski got in the game and my great Uncle said, "what the f____ is that Polac doing playing for Germany???????????" He was actually upset, because there is a history between Poland and Germany. So I had to explain to him that the Polish soccer team kind of sucked, so it was in Podolski's professional interest to play with the German team which was quite likely to qualify for the World Cup (and won it in 2014, with Podolski on the team).
My great Uncle still wasn't happy about it. But as I recall, Podolski had some connection to Germany which is probably less attenuated than Steven Enoch's connection to Armenia.
