… and dedicated to Tod Lindberg and his daughter Abbey. Tod is editor of Hoover’s Policy Review and a foreign affairs guru and both Lindbergs are soccer fanatics. I, on the other hand, can only say – further to the very interesting discussion from Ilya, et al. – that I know as little about soccer as about American sports. I am hazy on how most of them are scored, to start with. Leaving my inadequacies aside, however, Chris at OJ has a fascinating post on the intersection of soccer and international law, specifically the recognition of which places count as countries to be able to send teams, and what those who don’t count are doing instead.
Padania’s victory [over Kurdistan] was not in the football (American translation: “soccer”) World Cup being played in South Africa but in the one that was just played in Gozo. You know, the Viva World Cup, the tournament among the unrecognized states of the world.
The World Cup being played in South Africa is sponsored by FIFA, the Federation Internationale de Football Association, the governing body of international soccer that is an association of the national football leagues from around the world. But, as author Steve Menary put it, there are “the lands that FIFA forgot,” such as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, Gozo, Occitania,Somaliland, and, of course, three-time world (?) champions Padania. (No Transnistria, but Sealand is an Associate Member.) The Viva World Cup is organized by the NF-Board (see also wiki), which may have originally stood for “Non-FIFA Board” but is now referred to as the “New Federation Board.”