The International Practice Squad Program was an initiative of the National Football League (NFL) in which football players were selected from other countries outside the United States or Canada. They were assigned to several of the NFL teams. This program began operations in 2004.
Players from countries like Mexico (Rolando Cantú and Manuel Padilla), Finland (Seppo Evwaraye, Klaus Alinen and Iiro Luoto), Germany (Ulrich Winkler, Samuel Gutekunst, Michael Quarshie and Christian Mohr), England (Marvin Allen, Shaun Smith and Aden Durde), Sweden (Carl-Johan Björk), Russia (Sergey Ivanov), France (Sebastian Sejean), Norway (Anders Akerstrom), Belgium (Patrice Majondo-Mwamba) and Japan (Noriaki Kinoshita) were promoted to several professional teams of the NFL, whether to practice teams or active rosters, even giving them opportunities to play in other leagues such as the AFL, UFL or CFL.
This program was closed by the same NFL in 2009.
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