All four nations could qualify via European qualifying groups and in 1982 all but Wales managed to make the World Cup finals.

The European qualifying groups are made up of 5 or 6 teams with the top team going through and the second place teams having a final knock out game to decide who goes through.

The groups are based on FIFA ranking so it is unusual to see the historically strong teams like Italy and Germany in the same group

All the worlds footballing nations (even the yanks) are grouped into confederations based on geography – the Yanks are in CONACAF, and the UK is in UEFA, ie Europe.

The teams are drawn into qualifying groups who play each other in mini-leagues with the winners going through to the World Cup. There are regional intricacies, but that’s basically it.

Each region gets a number of qualifying places based on their footballing prowess – Europe and South America taking the greatest share.

There’s no reason, other than rank ineptitude on their part, why all the home nations as well as Ireland can’t qualify. There’s no reason that the World Cup final couldn’t be England v Scotland (unlikely I know – but possible).

Hi PalQ,
What many people don't realise is that despite being a 'United Kingdom', we are in fact seperate countries. We have our own identity.

Not sure how accurate this analogy is but I bet Canadians don't like to be called American and Vice versa.

Muck the proud Welshman, who would be very offended to be known as English.
Although tonights World cup I am behind England, but that is because Wales failed to qualify (again).

Muck

Mucky - just to muck up the situation a bit, but if Wales is a separate country how come the Prince of Wales is an Englishman?

Yes that is a very touchy subject in Wales with many people, however, bearing in mind that the English Royal family are Germanic, I guess it doesn't matter really.

Muck

Muck: touche!

>>>>>
What many people don't realise is that despite being a 'United Kingdom', we are in fact seperate countries
>>>>>

it depends how you use the word "country" in fact, by most measures, the UK is a single country. and it is a silly analogy that calling the UK a single country is like calling the US and canada a single country. silly.

No it would be more apt to call Canada and the UK a single country as QEII is Head of State in both (which i find a very very sad fact - a medieval type of thing - i just can't believe they still have a monarch - regardless of claims of how much she and the royals generate in business, tourism, etc. Let's see when Bonnie Prince Charlie gets the throne if they think the same! And then they can make some other dork the Prince of Wales.

Walkingaround, I agree, it is silly, but it is no more silly to us Welsh than saying we are part of England.

"in fact, by most measures, the UK is a single country"

No the UK is not a single county by any measures.

It means UNITED KINGDOM. That means all countries within are united under the same monarch.
But not the same government, entirely.
It is a very complicated situation.
But never confuse Wales with England. Or Scotland either.

Muck

Ah David. In my dreams

David,
The UK may have created football (soccer), but it was Brazil that really mastered it!

muck...saying the UK is a single country is in no way confusing england with wales or scotland. i may rarely travel beyond the home countries but there is no need to patronise...even i manage to understand this "subtlty"....however complex.

it still does not mean that we are not all one country.

PalQ, as an Australian I find your comments a little tiresome, but I'll put them down to a failure to understand the Westminster parliamentary system we share with Canada and New Zealand. As it happens I'm a republican (please note the small "r&quot, but you shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that there's any desire here to adopt the 18th-century American presidential model.

You can put this down to yet another example of other countries' perverse and puzzling refusal to accept the natural superiority of all things American. Or you can see it as the result of the evolution of democratic forms that continued in Britain and its colonies after the United States gained its independence. In this model the monarchy is no more than a sentimental link to the past, rather like the American attachment to a quaint old British system of weights and measures.

Walkinaround, I am in no way meaning to patronise... Where are you from?

Muck

It should be remembered that as the 'smaller' partners in this...cough....alliance, it's vitally important to Scots and Welsh that we maintain our sporting identities as seperate nations.
No offence to my English cousins on here, but many Scots have been surprised that the English find it so hard to understand why Scots won't support them in the world cup.
For many English, I feel the concept of both England and Great Britain is interchangeable or even the same thing.
To many Scots, Scotland and GB are definitely 2 separate things and we feel little or no affinity to the concept of a united island.
Almost all Scots have English friends or family, and there is no antipathy to the English as a whole, but when it comes to sport the fact that our greatest rivals and playing, combined with the fact that we need to 'be seen to be different' and not part of the UK, leads many Scots to hope that England lose.
This argument/theory put forward by many English commentators that 'we're all part of the UK so support England' gets laughed out of town in Scotland.
It's not nasty, or evil...it's just a way of asserting the fact that not all people in the British Isles are English.

I shall avoid any ongoing political debates that may ensue from this thread, but as an aside....

It's not just in football that, as we call them, the 'home nations' compete separately. I'd even rashly hazard a guess that it's more the norm than competing a united team.

So, for instance, we compete as separate teams in rugby (with Northern Ireland joining with Eire to play as Ireland). Just to confuse things, a united rugby team called the British and Irish Lions play a showpiece tour-tournament about once a year. For this, the team is selected using the strongest players from the four home rugby nations.

Outside of the Olympics, you'll find us competing separately in many team sports, such as field hockey. In international golf tournaments, such as The Masters or The Open, individual players are listed as representing England, Scotland etc. In the Commonwealth Games, we compete as four separate nations.

In fact, at the moment, I can only think of the Olympics and Davis Cup Tennis where we compete as 'Great Britain'. In the Olympics, many sports put their national instincts aside to play as 'Great Britain', football being the notable exception.

Playing as a united football team would cause all sorts of arguments and just ain't gonna happen. With each currently having its own home league, each country can currently send teams to compete in the European Champions League, for instance. If we competed internationally as UK/GB, UEFA could argue that we should do so with our home leagues, only sending the best from the home nations. This could have a disastrous effect on the weaker home leagues, with the English teams dominating everything.

And finally, let's not forget that the United Kingdom as 'one country' is merely a political entity. We still regard ourselves as separate nations in a racial/cultural/historical sense, not just separate regions.

MacSporran, you make a good point about us English seeing Engladn/Britain as interchangeable, I think histporically this has a ring of truth about it. However, in recent years, I suspect prompted by devolution, there's been a strong move to recapture an 'English' identity. Historically, you would see the Union Flag flying and the national anthem of the UK played at England Games (and not just in football). Now, you only ever see the England flag (the cross of St George) flying and there's strong calls for England to adopt its own national anthem, probably 'Land of Hope and Glory'.

Cor blimey - is there anything that you chaps can't over complicate?

Scotland, England etc aren't separate countries - although they are increasingly antonymous. They don't have separate seats at the UN, armed forces, foreign ministries etc etc.

However in a sporting context what you have to remember is that the UK invented most of the major world games and as such if we chose to think of the constituent parts of the UK as separate countries then that's up to us. Because we set most of these games up the rest of the world has just had to accept the status quo. The Olympics was set up by a Frenchman - so we had to go along with his rules and enter as the UK.

There are all sorts of anomalies, for instance the "England" cricket team is actually the UK and Ireland cricket team - if you are born in the British Isles then you can play for England.

The rules for national eligibility for Rugby defy belief. There are welsh Maoris apparently.

There is also the issue of sports politics to consider as four countries (effectively five as the Irish vote the same as us) we have four votes on FIFA, UEFA and the other comparable bodies, This gives us disporoprtionate influence - and we're in no hurry to give this up.

The moral of this story - If you want to make up the rules, make up the games.

Let's not do the 4 Nations thing again.

But we ARE separate countries. Not separate states, but definitely separate countries

It’s a question of definition isn’t it? I’m sure the Basques think that they are a separate nation but they aren’t in any meaningful way. Not even in a sporting context.

The reason that we have separate sporting identities is simply a historical accident, caused by us playing the various games first – it’s not a reflection of geo-political reality. If we played yank sports, for example, we would probably play as the UK. After all we play the yanks at golf as the EU (we were once just Britain, then Britain and Ireland, now the EU)

In any case it’s rather more fun this way around – especially as the other bits of the jigsaw are pony at football (a more interesting question would be what on earth has gone wrong with Scottish football – the country of Dalgleish, Johnstone, Gemmil, Gilzean, Baxter etc is now rank at footy)

The various bits of Britain have varying degrees of autonomy, but one thing they aren’t is nations. (If I had my way I’d be shot of the lot of ‘em, but that’s another matter. I understand the full horror of the phrase “Barnet Formula”, you see.)