Poland is located in central Europe though. I view Slovenia, Poland and Italy as EU members, so all in the same bag. In your view where does Germany fit in? Did reunification take place or did East Germany miss the turn?
Here's my full mock draw: A Russia Colombia Iceland Morocco B Brazil Switzerland Tunisia South Korea C Germany Croatia Costa Rica Nigeria D Portugal Spain Egypt Australia E Poland England Iran Panama F Belgium Peru Senegal Saudi Arabia G France Uruguay Denmark Japan H Argentina Mexico Sweden Serbia No real groups of death.. but I'd say groups H and C would be the toughest... poor Australia, too...
They are wrong. Ex yugoslavia is shared and mixed between different cultures, south, east, and middle east, the influences of roman empire ottoman empire austrian hungarian empire byzance even the moves of Persia. You got both catholics muslims and orthodoxs in this part of europe.bosnians muslims croatian catholics serbians orthodox 17 % of croatian population is from italian decents. You won't find 17 % of people with italian decents and mediterraneans in ukraine or poland. Yugoslavia was not part of sovietic union either. And again Greece is a balkanic country too. But my point was especially about Greece. You can't say on one hand that eastern countries did not perform well and that greece did. Greece and Croatia come from the same part of europe. They are both balkanic. So either Greece is an eastern country too either Croatia is not.
People are commonly wrong on generalizations. But this doesn't help us any further. When it's about communication one simply has to understand what is meant - and often scientifical purity is not very useful on communication. Like when in statistics in the U.S. they classify their population with the terms "whites, blacks, asians and latinos". Even if we know that "latino" comes from Latium, and this is the region of Rome (so ... "whites"), we know exactely what they mean. And it's useless to discuss. We understand what they mean and this is all.
Understanding what they mean is not a reason not to tell them they are wrong. Then they just have to give a look at the card posted above to see themselves how wrong they are. As long as they continue to say these things i will continue to tell them how wrong they are. I won't shut. By the way slovenia and northern italia have much more in common than slovenia and any part from poland will ever do. If they want to generalize then saying europe should be enough, if they want to be more specific and spare europeans nations in different parts they should know what they are talking about when they do and be at least logical. Croatia Bosnia Greece from 2014 are both balkanic countries when Russia is not.
I did say Greece did well in 2014 and the eastern European teams (Russia, Romainia, Ukraine, Czech Republic) did badly in 2016. two different tournaments.
Czech republic that are in middle..why should they be linked more to russian and romanian failures than to Germany semi final? Or Poland 1/4 finals. Slovakia and Hungaria reached round 16 as well. Every parts of europe had different kinds of results in the past years.
People in Poland really hate to be called "Eastern Europeans", and I think that the same goes for the Czechs, Hungarians and to lesser extent Slovaks. It was an artificially invented political classification (and a complete geographic misnomer - Poland lies in the very center of Europe geographically) in order to divide Europe into two camps after WWII. Nowadays it is sill used to refer to the above countries by some, primarily Russians with grand imperial delusions and those unsympathetic to those countries as the term is often associated with backwardness when compared to "Western Europe".