...most of the club teams (as opposed to National Teams) in the professional sports world are world champions...
Take my own favorite team. I live in Tel-Aviv, my favorite basketball team is Maccabi Tel-Aviv. It consists of some 6 Israeli players, 4 Americans, 1 Slovenian. There used to be Yugoslavs, Russians, Romanians, and what not.
Our soccer champion features players from Europe and Africa as well as members of both local nations, as far as I can remember.
So, it's not really a criterion. What matters, in my opinion, is the management and the fan base. A team is Japanese not because its players are Japanese. It's Japanese because the management operates in the Japanese economy, and has a Japanese crowd, with its unique tastes and fan traditions.
In most of the world - that blob outside the coasts of America - people weirdly go to International games, even those of club teams - wearing their National flags. Weird but true. |