Why do you say so? Why are the Faroe Islands/Luxembourg better off in UEFA than they would be in CONCACAF? Its not like they have improved ever since they joined UEFA. They play better competition only 5-6 times a year. Neither do any of their players play in any other established leagues of Europe. They are all part time players. When you are Faore Islands, the 'distance' between you and the rest is so large that it really doesn't make much of a difference if you are playing Montenegro or Holland. Though Holland are so much better than Montenegro, both are so distant from Faroe Islands in terms of over all quality, that they seems the similar. I would buy your point in case of nations like Turkey/Armenia/Israel etc who have the minimum necessary population base ( Sorry, I don't want to start another debate on population vs football, got the P word in here to get my point across) and full time professional players who are constantly competing with the rest of Europe. If its part timers we are talking about, who play half a dozen games every year against much better competition, then I doubt it lifts their game.
The Faroe Islands' league is professional, and their clubs participate in UEFA competitions. They also have several players in Denmark's first division and even one in the Premiership, while Bahamas' best players compete where, in American colleges off the radar (not even DIII.) Only one managed to make it to an eighth division English club. Luxembourg also has players in the Bundesliga, Switzerland, and France's Ligue 2. Just an educated guess, but the FI's footballing program wouldn't be half of what it was if they weren't able to test their mettle against top competition in addition to having English and Danish scout their players Turkey and Israel have much more money/sponsorships behind their programs and have both been to the World Cup (Turkey almost won it.) My other guess is that while Israel may have qualified to more World Cups had they stayed in Asia, they wouldn't be the decent side they are from decades of playing in Europe.
yeah in fact he was so good that Man City had to make a special request to loan in another player for the last week of the season... to NOT play him.
In fact it would be nice have Greenland in CONMEBOL if only we could drag it to Patagonia so we could always have tons of cold beer at hand for Copa Américas, Sudamericanas & WQS.
^^^This, even mediocre players are able to get training/playing time at major clubs just because of their proximity to them.
If the EU exists in 20 years, that is. The wealthy western EU nations may make a push to scale it way back given the problems that poorer nations are causing with the euro.
Yes, they are a member of the Football Island Games Assocation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_national_football_team
Bump. Qaqortoq has a Fieldturf pitch. Hopefully, Nuuk can get one soon. They have a league, but most pitches are sand. Greenland has 57 K in population. They'd get slaughtered in UEFA. They'd fit much better in CONCACAF. Greenlandic is originally an Inuit (native) language. Many Greenlanders would be classed as mestizo by Spanish speakers. Hopefully, they get admitted to FIFA soon.
I agree that they'd fit in much better in Concacaf, nations need to be careful what they wish for when choosing their own confederations. Look at Kazakstan, they are whipping boys in UEFA while their neighbors Uzbekistan are becoming an Asian powerhouse and are on the verge of qualifying for their first ever world cup. However, the problem with Greenland is that they are technically an autonomous kingdom of Denmark, their head of state is the queen of Denmark, they are heavily subsidized by Copenhagen and even use Danish Kroner as their currency. So it will be interesting to see how FIFA rule on this one.... I would love to see them in CONCACAF and hope we (the USA) draw them in WCQ
It seems like it makes more sense geographically, if they were to join FIFA at any point, to join CONCACAF. I'll also share this fantastic picture.
Cool I'll take it you've been there.. I'll also share this picture below I took in 2008 from Tasilaq... um, there's some sort of a football match being played lol... One issue that I just considered though... what about the flight situation? If I'm not mistaken, Greenland is well connected (well, by Greenlandic standards lol) to Europe with regular flight from Nuuk to Copenhagen, and Kulusuk on the east with several daily flights to Iceland. However, do they have any flights to North America? I know the Baltimore-Nuuk flights were cancelled due to financial losses, I don't even know if there are any direct flights from Greenland to Canada anymore even. I guess teams would have to come on chartered flight, and fans would be faced with an extremely expensive flight lol. I don't know if FIFA would consider this an issue, but they might.
Nope, never been to Greenland, that pic has just been one of my favorites for a while. It truly is a world game. The most direct route to Greenland from NA is through Reykjavik, I believe.
Those are fantastic photos. Yes they still fly Greenland to Iqaluit Canada. From there you can get to Ottawa, Montreal or Toronto directly. I looked into it this summer and it was a Monday and Friday only schedule during the May to September (IIRC) summer season. The Greenland - Iqaluit portion is run by a Dash-8 run by Air Greenland. The major selling point was it was going to hook up time wise with flights and against flights south to get into the North American air system.
Without researching it, North Cyprus, Nepal, South Sudan (process has started), Zanzibar and some crowd on the top of scandanavia covering Northern Norway, Sweden and Finland, Naomi i think they are called. Most are unlikely bar South Sudan.