AFC President message to FFA: no NZ teams by 2011

The EU is not a single country despite there being a European Parliament.

 

I agree that FIFA does things a little differently. But the United Nations and other organisations such as the International Olympic Committee see only Britian.

 

The Commonwealth Games keeps the UK member countries separate too.

 

The UN uses sovereignty as its membership condition, though this has not always been the case. To pick an example close to home, New Zealand joined the UN two years before becoming an independent sovereign state in 1947. Even then NZ only acquired full status in 1987 - "New Zealand, as of 1987, is a free-standing constitutional monarchy whose parliament has unlimited sovereign power." [source: NZ Parliament]. The 1947 to 1987 status of NZ "still allowed the UK government to legislate for NZ." [source: NZ Parliament]

 

So I guess you would argue, for consistency's sake, that pre-1987 NZ was not a country and should not have been allowed to compete in, for example, the 1982 world cup!

 

 

Correct - Scotland is no longer a wholly separate sovereign state. That does not mean it is not a separate country - just as NZ was indeed a separate country prior to 1986. The two terms have different definitions.