Biggest sport upset from a small population country?
I came here to bump
Regarding the poll, I had nothing useful to add so I vote Dan Quayle :)
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If I say yes, I see BLs coming
If I say no, I see BLs coming
Honestly, I just thought it was funny ... you spelled potatoe wrong :)
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Out of all possible answers, this is the most correct answer to the most people.
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Population doesn't mean that much imho. A small country where a specific sport is the number 1 sport, often can be considered the favorit against a bigger nation where the sport only has a minor reputation. Best example: USA and "soccer".
Also: A preliminary round victory certainly is less of an upset than winning a title.
So among those options my choice is Denmark. They weren't even qualified, appeared rather unprepared and yet they won.
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Just for an odd statistic, the number of males of playing age (20-34) in all of iceland is less than ten times the number of professional players in England, where soccer is the major sport and dominates the sporting culture of the country
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Population becomes important when both nations are into a sport, as the pool of talent is much more limited for countries with small population.
Can you find other examples (beyond those listed in the poll) where a country with population similar to Denmark, or smaller, was able to upset another country with a much larger population in a team sport? I'm talking about games where both countries were interested in the sport. There are about 100 countries with smaller population than Denmark, so it's not like this list is short. But the list of upsets is very short.
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There's Uruguay's surprise victory over Brazil at the Maracanã in the 1950 World Cup final match. That was a tiny nation (roughly 2 million people) taking out the 8th largest population in the world (53 million), not to mention one of the biggest football powers of the time.
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Well New Zealand is the record and current Rugby world champion.. Cuba excels in Baseball, considering their population. In Handball smaller nations regularly upset the bigger ones. And as narini mentioned, Uruguay did great in its football history, not only in 1950. I'm sure that there are more examples, but that would require some investigation. ;)
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Pitcairn island had slightly over 100 people.... before the sex scandal
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Iceland <3 I was so proud of them at this year's EURO
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Austria loosing to the Faroe islands. They are so small their national team aren't even full time athlets. I think their goalkeeper is a dentist. But they are inhabited by the descendents of Vikings so that makes it better, right ?
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i recall nz managed to tie against italy during our efforts at the football worldcup 2010.
that was pretty neat. we naturally went out because we're a small nation that isnt all that big or good at football (its not a national sport), but because of that draw (1-1), we managed to pull italy down with us which was a pretty neat triumph.
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Why do you call it an "upset"? It's not like they cheated, ay?
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Neither am I, which is why I understood it as the first two simple definitions :)
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Not a big fan of any sport so I'll just leave bump.
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I voted for Iceland they did great at Euro16 and Wales did good also
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Also Faroe Island beat Greece twice in a single eleminations to Euro 2016. What even more funny Greece giveaway two coaches/managers Ranieri to Leicester City (England Champion 2016) and Fernando Santos to Portugal (European Champion 2016).
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Senegal(15M) 1 - 0 France (60M) 2002 world cup.
Croatia third place in 1998 world cup.
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Greece won EURO 2004, but with 11M it's not that small, and its rival in the final (Portugal) had roughly the same population.
To those who doubt whether the 2004 USA basketball national team deserved the term dream-team, this was their roster. A few players at the beginning of their carreer (Lebron, Wade, Carmelo), but also prime Duncan and Iverson.
O.GA
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