Uefa EC 2008

At least Russia and Turkey partly straddle Europe, I've always had a hard time working out what part of Europe Israel is in exactly?

Know what you mean, if they can win a Eurovision song contest, perhaps we should enter the African Nations cup or something!

Hello there!

Well, first of all, Israel in not in africa...

From a moral and cultural point of view, Israel is a real democracy, and therefore much closer to European standards than many other countries.

This is one of the reasons why Israel could not possibly compete in the Asian League, where most countries are not democracies and (also for many other reasons) would not accept Israel in a sports competition.

Israel was founded by Europeans, and even today, more than 50% of its population is made of first / second generation europeans.

An interesting article on the subject is here:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2003/06/27/edsalz_ed3_.php?page=1


Cheers
Nathan

This is an argument I've heard before but I'm afraid it's a bogus one. Prior to 1989 many of the countries that played in the European Championships were communist dictatorships (and a fascist one if you count Franco's Spain up until the 1970's) - the system of government employed by a nation has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to its entitlement to enter a REGIONAL sports tournament. The only criteria it should have to fulfil is that it is located in the region in question. Israel is not in Europe and whether it was founded by Europeans is also irrelevant; so was Australia and nobody's suggesting they should be given membership of UEFA.

Like I said before, Russia and Turkey are in a unique position to choose as they straddle two continents, Israel doesn't. It's in Asia - end of story.

Culturally maybe, but geographically certainly not

In addition, Hebrew is an Afro-Asiatic language, closely related to Arabic, Egyptian & other languages spoken in North Africa and completely unrelated to the Indo-European languages spoken across Europe. (Ok, apart from Turkey ).

R

wouldn't it be great, if something came up from the soil, on mars and swallowed the little rover?

then everybody on our planet could set aside all our differences, form one world government, and become "Speci*ists" as we band together, to hate our planetary neighbours!

If only...

Though there's way too much hate for that... Like dumping the Pacific into a teapot...

Now if there was a bunch of alien races to hate and kill, we might be able to manage...

There would be more teams to lose to at football as well!

Congratulations to Spain, I think the best team won in the end - they were constistently good throughout the tournament, played well tonight and Torres' goal was a cracker. Now if England could see their way to qualifying for the World Cup in 2010 I'd probably be able to take a much keener interest (and a far less dispassionate view, but then partisanship is half the fun of footie!)