Professional Footballers Association chief executive Gordon Taylor has labelled the Alan Smith affair a Whitehall farce.
The Leeds striker was selected then dropped within hours by England yesterday after it emerged that he had been questioned over allegations he threw a plastic bottle into the Elland Road crowd during a Carling Cup match against Manchester United earlier this month.
The decision to exclude the player was in line with FA policy - coined two years ago when Lee Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate were involved in a lengthy criminal court case - not to select players under police investigation for the national team.
He told the BBC Today programme: "The whole process has descended into a Whitehall farce. It's not as though they didn't know about this. It's humiliating and I just wonder what the manager thinks about this. He selects his team and then the player is sent home again.
"This is not an unknown incident. This happened some time ago. Its as though one part of the FA doesn't know what the other is doing."
Filed by Johnny Proby
