For a brief moment in time, it seemed that learning world capitals was going to be the next big thing. People were all like “Podgorica this” and “Funafuti that.” That fizzled faster than the idea of paying more than $1 for a cupcake, but you can’t hold good trivia down.
With that in mind we’re here to start a new, hot trivia trend – national football team nicknames. Keep in mind in this case we mean football as in “soccer” – or the game some of you may refer to as, “boring-ball,” or “how is this the world’s most popular sport I just don’t get it,” or “what is wrong with these people what’s the deal with the rioting,” or of course “that game that’s ok for my daughter to sign up for, but so help me if my son does I will be devastated.”
We’ve found that national nicknames can be filed under one of a few distinct categories: 1.) animals 2.) unimaginative/lazy/nondescript (all teams that refer to themselves as a color, or use a generic adjective to describe their performance) 3.) _____ Boys(z), [Caribbean squads especially like this formula] 4.) funny natural resource boast/well thought out/generally awesome team name 5.) And last but not least, the ‘maybe this means something different in your native tongue?’ category.
Let’s look at some highlights. Continue reading
