From Newsgroup: rec.sport.soccer

Why are Surinam and Guyana members of CONCACAF when they're both in
South America?

And while we're at it, if anybody can enlighten us about the reasons
other countries are members of the "wrong" confederation, that would be
of interest too. For instance Guam in AFC, Kazakhstan and Israel in
UEFA.

BTW why doesn't right clicking in the subject line in xananews do
anything, so I had to type Why are Surinam and Guyana members of
CONCACAF twice instead of being able to copy and paste it?
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From Newsgroup: rec.sport.soccer

Mark wrote:

Why are Surinam and Guyana members of CONCACAF when
they're both in South America?

In a word, politics.

Or more accurately, geo-politics.

And while we're at it, if anybody can enlighten us about
the reasons other countries are members of the "wrong"
confederation, that would be of interest too. For instance
Guam in AFC, Kazakhstan and Israel in UEFA.

I was more outraged by the inclusion of Australia in the
Eurovision Song Contest! What the fuck was THAT about?!

Oh hang on, that other word everyone likes... money.

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From Newsgroup: rec.sport.soccer

Blueshirt wrote:

Mark wrote:

Why are Surinam and Guyana members of CONCACAF when
they're both in South America?

In a word, politics.

Or more accurately, geo-politics.

I think I need more than 1 word to understand it. Please explain.
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From Newsgroup: rec.sport.soccer

Mark wrote:

Blueshirt wrote:

Mark wrote:

Why are Surinam and Guyana members of CONCACAF when
they're both in South America?

In a word, politics.

Or more accurately, geo-politics.

I think I need more than 1 word to understand it. Please
explain.

Those countries have closer cultural ties to the Caribbean,
so it makes sense from their point of view.
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From Newsgroup: rec.sport.soccer

On 2026-05-06 08:31, Mark wrote:

Blueshirt wrote:

Mark wrote:

Why are Surinam and Guyana members of CONCACAF when
they're both in South America?

In a word, politics.

Or more accurately, geo-politics.

I think I need more than 1 word to understand it. Please explain.

Well, for example Israel is in UEFA because a large number of teams in
AFC would refuse to play against them. This has been an ongoing problem
for a long time, and at one point they were in a qualifying group with
NZ and Australia, if I remember correctly (on a pathway that included Rhodesia, presumably because nobody in Africa would play them.

Surinam and Guyana apparently have much closer ties to the carribean
countries and presumably asked to be included in CONCACAF.

Some countries like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan requested to join UEFA,
since at least part of their territory is included in (some definitions
of) Europe. Europe is not really a continent in the tectonic plate
sense, so some of the proposed borders in the Caucasus and in Russia
(usually the Ural mountains) are not agreed by everyone.

I am sure there are other stories about specific examples. FIFA does not
want boycotts and things like what happened when the USSR refused to
play Chile after Pinochet took over, so it takes step to avoid that sort
of thing (as does UEFA when setting up qualifying groups)

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