In several sports, the United Kingdom and wider British Isles divide along internal boundaries: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are represented by separate national teams, while in the Olympic Games they combine to form a Great Britain team.
One is that the country is relatively small, population 8 million, and the expense of travel around the world to follow their team is too great for most.
But the South Korean National Team is popular because it internationally wins medals in the Olympics or World Cup Events.
For instance, the popularity of the Socceroos is heightened during the FIFA World Cup simply due to participation in a global event.
[9] The most notable example of this situation is the United Kingdom, which has four national associations on its territory (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales).
Players become permanently tied to a national association, with one exception to be outlined below, once they play in "an official competition of any category or any type of football".
A recent example of such a waiver is that of Gedion Zelalem, a German-born player of Ethiopian descent who has represented the U.S. at under-23 level.
[15] Players with multiple nationalities may choose to play for one of those countries at any age by making a written request to FIBA.
[16] As in association football, playing in an international friendly cannot tie a player to any country; only participation in an official FIBA competition is sufficient for this purpose.
The method by which a player obtains citizenship is irrelevant to national team eligibility, as long as it has been legally acquired.
The only use of the grandparent rule is to determine a player's eligibility to represent the national team of a country's dependent territory, with two notable examples being those of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, both US insular areas with their own national federations, and whose native-born residents are US citizens by birth.
FIBA mandates that in official competitions, no national team can have more than one player on its roster who acquired citizenship by any means after reaching age 16.
[21] Unlike many sports, which make changes of nationality difficult or impossible, cricket allows players to represent more than one country during their careers.
However, a player is limited to representing two countries in their lifetime, and a three-year stand-down period is enforced—unless the player who has previously represented an ICC associate member is seeking to play for an ICC full member (i.e., a Test-playing nation), in which case there is no stand-down period.
[25] Note that unlike association football or basketball, players can be captured by appearing in international friendlies, such as the traditional mid-year and end-of-year Tests.
More recently, questions have been raised about the eligibility of two players who participated in the European qualifying process for the 2019 Rugby World Cup, one for Belgium and the other for Romania.
As a result, their primary loyalty may be to their club rather than their country, especially if the competition that the national team is playing in does not offer the same prestige.
Their Olympic athletes were given everything they needed to live prosperously and train, but were not technically paid to do it because it was sponsored by the state.
With the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and its influence, Western countries demanded to allow professionals to compete at the Olympics and the current status quo came into order.