If you guessed USA and then see it take first place, then its impossible not to think women are not included. Hence, I immediately entered Canada and the Scandinavian countries.
yeah good point. I looked up info on the two medals that the US has won in mens' soccer and it's just about the most pathetic story imaginable. They won both the bronze and the silver in the same year, 1900, the first year they ever played football at the Olympics. There were only three teams competing, all of them were club teams not really national teams, and 2/3 were American. So the US got silver and bronze for finishing last and next-to-last. haha. On the other hand, many of the subsequent Olympic tournaments in the early 20th Century took place in Europe and only had European teams competing. The best showing from the US men's team at the World Cup was also the first year of the competition, in 1930, the team finished 3rd overall. I guess they just peaked early. Or... after 1930 Americans decided that football was a sport only for girls and small children. No team in history has dominated the sport like the US women's team has.
Just an aside: though the Canadian women's team has performed better than most at the World Cup, they have never won Olympic gold. The one gold medal in soccer that Canada has is from their men's team victory in 1900 over the two American teams competing that year.
and still, even if you want to ignore the women's medals count, you'd still have a list that reflects the fact that Cameroon, Mexico, Canada and Nigeria have won more gold medals in football than Brazil, Portugal, or (united) Germany. It's a surprising list either way.
No I shouldn't. Currently this is a quiz only about countries that have won gold medals in football at the Olympics. There are only 20 countries that have done so. It's impossible to add more. Unless I add in everyone who has ever won silver or bronze, but I don't want to do that. 20 is a nice round number. There's no point in adding silver and bronze winners. The results would be less interesting because you would see more countries that you would expect to see and the ones most people miss would be less surprising because they would share a space with other countries that are not as good. I like it the way it is.
The last summer Olympics was in 2012. This quiz was made in 2014. After the 2016 Olympics in Rio, I'll update it.
If I update this the resulting quiz will be much less interesting than it used to be. Germany's women's team finally brought home gold for their country for the first time (though, if sexist remarks made by gandalf and others are any indication, their efforts will not be much appreciated or noticed); and Brazil's men's team won their country's first gold medal in football, as well.
What that means for the quiz is that there aren't really any fascinating omissions anymore. I liked the fact that before you could type in teams that are famous for being very good at football (Brazil, Germany) and not see them show up. I imagine quite a few were stunned by this. After these last Olympics, pretty much every team you would expect to have won gold has, except maybe Portugal. Or Colombia perhaps. Not interesting.
The last summer Olympics was in 2012. This quiz was made in 2014. After the 2016 Olympics in Rio, I'll update it.
What that means for the quiz is that there aren't really any fascinating omissions anymore. I liked the fact that before you could type in teams that are famous for being very good at football (Brazil, Germany) and not see them show up. I imagine quite a few were stunned by this. After these last Olympics, pretty much every team you would expect to have won gold has, except maybe Portugal. Or Colombia perhaps. Not interesting.