Euro 2012 qualifying

[DarkYoung]

FTR, UEFA has loads of members who aren't part of the EU:

Switzerland
Norway
Russia
Belarus
Ukraine
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Georgia
Serbia
Bosnia
Albania
Macedonia
Turkey
Israel

If EU membership is the bar, then all these countries would need to be kicked out.

If being mostly in Europe the geographical entity is the bar, then Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, etc. would have to kicked out in addition to Turkey and Israel.

yerp sounds about right

not like you guy's let Cuba play in the World Series now is it?

[SlavikSvensk]

we talked about this before.

i really don't think Israel and Armenia or Kazakahistan should be in the European qualifiers.

I think they have Israel in European qualifiers because they couldn't have them qualify out of the Asian groups with their players traveling to Yemen, Egypt, or Iran. lol

I think Russia, Ukraine, Turkey rightfully are in European qualifiers as they have been for decades now.

it's all subjective. If it's geographical, then it's still dubious: Russia is 3/4 in the "Asian" part of Eurasia, so why doesn't it play in the AFF? Turkey is, what, 9/10 in Asia? Even the idea of "Europe" as a geographical entity is subjective and socially constructed, as it isn't actually a continent, but a small portion of the Eurasian continent. So is it tradition? Well then any side that's played in UEFA for a decent amount of time can be counted as having a traditional tie to UEFA. Israel's been in UEFA since the 1980s, which is longer than Russia has (since 1991, before that there was no Russian soccer team).

There's no possible objective criteria for membership, except for a country applying for and being granted entry into UEFA. That means every team playing in UEFA is legitimately a member.

yerp sounds about right

not like you guy's let Cuba play in the World Series now is it?

no, but that's not a tournament involving national sides...it's a professional league championship. we do play them in the Baseball World Cup and the World Baseball Classic, which are the two major international cups involving national sides.