This is one of those irritating quizzes that I take every couple of months and while over time I have gotten every one, I have never gotten 100% as each time I forget one or two. Today it was Poland.
I guess most people don't know czechchoslovakia and yugoslavia. Makes sense, both cause serbia, montenegro, bosnia & herzegovina, macedonia, kosovo (Not even in fifa) czech rep. and slovakia don't do that well, and cause they separated into those countries a long time ago.
I'm an American who doesn't closely follow soccer/futbol and I'm thoroughly confused by the whole thing. Apparently, being a sovereign state is not a requirement to have a FIFA team. I looked up the list of associations and confederations, and after seeing British Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Cook Islands, etc. on the list, I gave up trying to figure the whole thing out. I'm curious, though, - what are the requirements to become an accepted team? Perhaps we should stop referring to the teams that play as "countries" and call them associations or something, because obviously not all of them are separate nations. Or am I missing something?
I don't mean literally, I mean as an allusion to their 2010 World Cup performance when they just lost out to Uruguay after Suarez handballed the ball out of the net, and then Gyan missed that penalty. I was so sad.
I would like to put in what I can about the under-fire "countryhood" of England vs the UK. The United Kingdom is rather complex when it comes to administrative divisions on account of hundreds and hundreds of years of monarchy and feudal history. But in a nutshell, the UK's official name is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Great Britain is the island the includes what is referred to as the 3 "constituent countries" of the UK: England, Scotland, and Wales. It's not the same as the Bundeslander in Germany or the 50 states of the USA because these two are federal republics, which give a certain level of autonomous power to their regional districts. The UK, however, is a parliamentary democracy operating under a constitutional monarchy. It's more like if the US and Canada banded together as one super country. The two would definitely get their own international teams, whereas Texas, California, Alaska, and other regions of the countries' states/provinces don't.
I don't think your comparison is fair. The UK might not officially be a federal state (whether or not it's a republic or a monarchy is irrelevant), but it looks pretty federal to me. I mean, three of the countries have their own parliament, with laws that can diverge from the ones made in Westminster! The difference, being that in a federal state the power theoretically is bottom up and not top down is rather theoretical, especially in today's day and age where federal states tend to centralize more power whereas historically central states try to delegate more. I really do think that UK countries are comparable to US States or Bundesländer, with the difference that there are fewer, so the power dynamics is a bit different. I mean, many Bundesländer, since you're talking about them, have been independent for most of their history, right up until the end of the 19th century - far longer than any UK "country"!
"It's more like if the US and Canada banded together as one super country" - and how do you think the German unification (which was more recent than the Acts of Union) came about?
Nice quiz! If you type in Russia, Soviet Union comes up, but if you type in Czech Republic, Czechoslovakia doesn't come up. Wouldn't it be better if either, both Czech Rep. and Russia Count or neither?
Can't believe I missed Argentina. As for Czechoslovakia & Yugoslavia, the only reason I did not guess these was because Russia caused Soviet Union to show up and Germany caused West Germany to show up. I'm probably not alone in this since they are the least answered.
Brazil did not play that badly, they were just beaten by a very good Belgium side. The big surprise was that Netherlands and Italy did not even qualify. Likewise, Chile and the USA, both reigning regional champions at the time, did not even qualify for the finals.
Happened again in 2022 World Cup, Germany knocked out in the group stage in group E which was grouped by Japan and Spain and Brazil only made it to the quarter finals which Brazil was beaten by Croatia through penalties 1(4)-1(2)
World cups won at home shouldn't really count anyway. Winning one abroad, that's the real test! But, hey, if it makes England happy. I mean, we have four more of those things. At this point, one more or one fewer...
I guess miracles do happen
1. Officially, FIFA states that the USA finished 3rd in that cup.
2. England is not a country. It is part of the UK. But they still have a separate soccer team, just like Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
Both should be accepted or none at all. Czechoslovakia (like the name suggests it already) is the 2 countries together.
accept it england!