Nations with Multiple National Teams

so given the fact that 2012 olympics will be in London....which team will the UK send to compete, since they get a auto qualification?

 

You need serious help......

I would've paid big bucks to see the north vs. south world cup qualifier.....

 

As I said, the situation with the US is delicate and this could be applied to the American case.
But believe me if this was appliable in some other parts of the world a lot of bloodshed in the past would have been prevented.

The US is specific, and you can't base your point on the American example.

 

First, Wales, Scottland, England, Northern Ireland, Catalonia, etc ARE nations. The UK, Spain, US, etc are nation states.

Second, the US has about three teams, the US, Puerto Rico, and Guam. A US passport is all that's needed to play for any of the three teams unless the local FA has additional rules.

 

Do HongKong and Macau have teams separate from Mainland China?

 

Most probably no-one.

 

Yes, and both are full fembers of the AFC and FIFA.

 

Yes, as does Taiwan, which competes as "Chinese Taipei."

I remember seeing an AFC qualifying fixture a few months back of Palestine vs. Chinese Taipei and being amused at the fact that neither is an actual country.

As for the UK, I know all the arguments in favor of them having four national teams, and I don't think any of them are all that compelling. However, since having those four teams and independent FAs was the condition on which the UK joined FIFA, there really isn't much that can be done about it. I don't like it, but we're stuck with it.

(And, for the record, Ryan Giggs isn't the only non-Englishman who'd play in a UK squad. Maik Taylor would start over David James.)

 

Except that David James doesn't start any more. I don't think Taylor would be ahead of Paul Robinson, although I think he'd be in a GB squad.

 

The four are countries. I don't see what's unconvincing about that. Do you think if the EU government got more powerful that the members would stop being countries and have to field one national team?

 

Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia all had their own national squads back when they were members of the Dual Monarchy, or Autria-Hungary, or whatever it is called. That's up to 1918.

And Greenland do, or did have a national team. Their last match was back in 2001 when they beat Tibet 4-1. So, Denmark has three teams: Denmark, Faroe Islands, and Greenland.

I am unsure of the relationship or the attitude of the Chinese FA or Chinese government toward's theTibetan national team. But Tibet has played two matches: both losses, to Greenland and to Monaco.

And as someone has mentioned before Macao, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) have their own squads.

 

These things are pretty much subject to one's definition. Obviously not everyone is going to share your definition here, from many BigSoccer posters to assorted separatist rebels. Not that your interpretation is any less valid, mind you. These days, the idea of a country being a country without it's own federal government is hardly universally accepted. In other words, Scotland would meet a more universal definition of country if it could unilaterally pull its troops out of Iraq and cease to put any money into the British budget.

Anyway, encarta (admittedly not the most authoritative source) gives two very different definitions of nation (there are 6 different definitions of country):

na·tion [ náysh'n ] (plural na·tions)

noun

1. people in land under single government: a community of people or peoples living in a defined territory and organized under a single government

2. people of same ethnicity: a community of people who share a common ethnic origin, culture, historical tradition, and, frequently, language, whether or not they live together in one territory or have their own government

You have to understand in the English language as spoken in the US, Canada and I would guess Australia and New Zealand, "nation" and "country" are synonyms, as in definition 1 above. That's a linguistic fact. Only in specialized academic circles will you hear nation used as you're using it. In conversational English in the above mentioned countries nation as you're using it more closely approximates "ethnic group", though that is also probably not sufficient. In any case, the inconsistancies of the term is largely why "nation" as a concept is regarded almost universally in Western academia as an artificial creation invented in the last 300 years.

And, above exceptions duely noted, the term "national team" is clearly meant to apply more closely to country than anything. How many "nations" make up, to use one example, the Russian national team? Should Marat Izmailov not play for the Russian national team, and instead play for some kind of Tatar national team? And what bout the other 200 or so officially recognized nations in the Russian Federation?

And perhaps I'm misundertanding, but I don't understand how this topic can be "delicate" in the US. The Balkans and the Caucasus mountains? Quite delicate. But the US? Again, perhaps I misunderstood.

 

The relationship between China and the unrecognized, unsanctioned Tibetan team (composed entirely of exiles) is nonexistant and I assure you the attitude is very very bad!

 

Scotland could pull out of the UK if they wanted to but as it is British politics is dominated by Scots anyway (Blair and Brown)

The UK is an entity that is unique on the planet. You have four countries (well technically three given that Wales is still considered a principality but I'll offend people if I don't say four) that are in the union by choice and have to opportunity to remove themselves from the said union every five years. The united Kingdom is not actually a country, it's a political entity designed to represent England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as a whole and act in their best interests. It's more of an agreement than anything else, in many ways it's no different to a country except that it's not. It's only through time that people have come to mistakenly refer to it as a country. The European Union is heading this way in case you hadn't realised.

The vast, vast majority of foreigners don't understand this concept, and come to think of it neither do the vast majority of Britons (most of which would be English unfortunately).

 

Again though, you're applying one of many definitions of country. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I likewise wouldn't consider someone refering to the UK as a country as being any more correct or incorrect than you are. "Country", "nation", "ethnicity" and so on have so many different definitions and connotations to so many people that this discussion could go on in circles forever.

 

well they'd be more wrong if they said the 4 weren't countries because they are wrong. Given that the majority of people here (on BS, not in the UK) don't know the difference between England and Britain it's understandable that there's confusion as they think that Scotland is part of England. If that was the case, which it isn't, Scotland would not have a right to a national team.

 

The USA has a couple of teams currently playing international soccer. There is the US national team that recently reached the world cup quarterfinals. And then there was this other Gulf team which recently almost got a bronze medal at the olympics. Saddam Hussein used to be the president of this country.

 

I think AS plays in Oceania, the others in Concacaf, though for some reason Guam did not compete in qualifying this time.

 

Doesn't Guam play in Asia?

 

No, they would not have.

Portugal, like a lot of colonial powers, did not reguard their colonies as independent nations and denied them any sign of independence-- such as a national team.

• Angola did not have a national team until 1977 post-independence.
• Mozambique did not have a national team until 1977 post-independence.
• Cape Verde did not have a national team until 1979 post-independence.

Portugal could've been represented by multiple teams, but was not. The economies of these nations were, no doubt, in no shape to support national football squads.

India did have its own national team while part of the British Empire, as did Canada, Australia, Ireland, South Africa, Uganda, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), and others.

The Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) competed in the 1938 (?) World Cup final before their independence from the Netherlands.

Edit: that's not to say that the British regarded the states in Africa as independent states, or to be an apologist for British colonial policies. They just had a different approach then the Portuguese or Soviets (for example).

Edit: Also, I was incorrect in what I posted earlier. Algeria did have its own national squad in the 1950s before independence from France in 1962.

 

Guam was part of Oceania but then became part of the Asian Confederation in the last WCQ cycle. However, Guam had to withdraw from WCQ due to lack of funds. Soccer is still a distant fourth on the island in terms of popularity (baseball, basketball and football being the top 3).

 

how do guamians compare to samoans football and size-wise?