So what’s the main thing that makes country a country?
Is it being recognized by most other countries in the world? Membership in the United Nations? Complete and utter sovereignty and territorial integrity?
Hell no!
A country is a country only if they have a national football team.
An application for affiliation from the Kosovo football association was deemed not to comply with art. 10 of the FIFA Statutes, which stipulates that only “an independent state recognised by the international community” may be admitted. In accordance with the Statutes, Kosovo cannot play any friendly matches.
HA! Take that, Kosovo!
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Sovereignty, usually.
Sovereignty? Completely useless!
FIFA’s legal department must be pretty clueless if they think that reply settles the issue. But then again, lawyers always know how to keep their children in employment.
Legal or not, it will be a while before we see a Kosovo – South Ossetia game.
I would like to see it though – it’d be a match of the century, two football giants like that…
Maybe a-al the Taiwanese football club, they’ll come back next year as Albanian-Pristina club.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Taipei_national_football_team
I disagree with you. Who cares about FIFA? I would rather be independend without UN recognition then dependent with UN recognition. You get it? Cheers.
That’s true, but if you look back at the recent history you’ll see that FIFA has infact influenced the world more profoundly than the UN.