yeah remember joe gaetjens who scored an amazing random header in the england match to help us move on? then they got beat like 12-0 by yugoslavia or argentina or something...
gandalf accidentally made the mistake he commonly does identifying bias and jingoism in others when really he ought to be identifying it in himself. I guess he really cares about diminishing female athletes if it helps his own insecurities and feelings of inadequacy when comparing his homes of Germany or France against the USA.
For my part, I don't especially care about sports at all. But facts are facts and I care about that.
For an encore maybe he can give us a rant about how the Olympic medals East and West Germany won at the Winter Olympics should all be tallied up together so they don't look inferior to Norway.
Fun fact: Unlike later tournaments, there was no bronze match in 1930. Apparently they thought it would be boring to watch the semifinal losers play each other, so the US and Yugoslavia were given joint third place. This fact is how I remember.
OK, I know I messed up by trying Russia and not Soviet Union. But why in the world would I try England? UK didn't work so I moved on. England is not a country. Please explain!!
Arron is absolutely right. The UK is a STATE, which is what misinformed people call a country. There are 196 states in the world. China, Russia, and USA are STATES. The UK is comprised of four countries, not states.
How can't anybody not think that England isn't not a non-country? I can never understand that. I mean that. Literally. I have no idea what I just typed.
England is a country in the same way Planet Hollywood is a planet. Just calling yourself that doesn't make it real. Okay, that's a bit extreme, because England used to be a country, and can easily become one again, by setting Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland free. Come on, guys, after Brexit, this is the next step to regain your "sovereignty"!
England is not a country, it's part of the UK. Except in sports like the World Cup when it is a country. Except in the Olympic Games when it's part of Great Britian. Except in the Commonwealth Games when it IS a country again!
Gosh some people have zero imagination when it comes to nuance and exceptions to rules. I hope these people are retiring and not about to enter the workforce.
To RedZombieAngel - This site uses 196 countries for its quizzes: 193 countries that are part of the United Nations + Vatican (which doesn't have a representative in UN), Taiwan (which is represented by China) and Kosovo (which is only partially recognised as a country, but Jetpunk includes it in the quizzes.
UK is represented as one nation in UN. But in football, each UK country plays seperately, they don't have a 'UK team'.
England and Scotland formed a union in 1707, but they had the foresight to check with FIFA (established) 1904 that they would still be allowed to field separate football teams?
They were actually heavily favoured to win in 1954. They had beaten Germany 8-3 in group stages, and the final victory of Germany was considered a huge upset.
It is legitimately confusing that England, Scotland and Wales are countries but not sovereign states- I don't think anyone claiming "England is not a country" is having a go. I still don't know if Russia et al were considered countries during the time of the Soviet Union.
The USSR maintained the political fiction that Belarus and Ukraine were both separate, associated states alongside the USSR and claimed seats at the UN for them. At the end of the war, the US and Britain let that slide.
However, the USSR definitely stamped on anything even remotely nationalist so it's not like they were ever going to get their own footie teams...
Context is key. In a quiz that asks for "countries", everyone understands that countries is used as a synonym for internationally recognised states, of which England isn't one. There are many, many more colloquial definitions of the word "country". For instances, the French region of Brittany is historically made up of "pays", which is the exact translation of the English word "country". There's the pays bigouden, the pays rouzig, the pays fouesnantais... In fact, my family is from the Pays Rouzig, which is made up of about 15 towns in Western Brittany, comprising a few thousans inhabitants. I would absolutely argue that it has a rich culture and history, very distinct from our neighbours, and that the language just doesn't sound the same as a few towns over. Yet you don't see me arguing that it's a country for the purposes of any of this quizzes! The word "country" can be used in many more contextes. What "country" does "country ham" come from, and why isn't it on this quiz?
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...
For my part, I don't especially care about sports at all. But facts are facts and I care about that.
For an encore maybe he can give us a rant about how the Olympic medals East and West Germany won at the Winter Olympics should all be tallied up together so they don't look inferior to Norway.
UK is represented as one nation in UN. But in football, each UK country plays seperately, they don't have a 'UK team'.
amazing
However, the USSR definitely stamped on anything even remotely nationalist so it's not like they were ever going to get their own footie teams...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10
Forgot Bulgaria for a bit, :/
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!