I think you definitely have to broaden that to the UK. There’s a really good geographical spread of dominant players from all parts of the islands over the years.
Fair point!
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Is lacrosse even contested anywhere else? Canada? I mean, the Irish hurling team would probably be pretty dominant in an international tournament.
World Lacrosse has 63 member countries from all across the globe. There has been a men’s championship since 1967 (the US has won all but 3, which were all won by Canada), and a women’s championship since 1982 (the US has won all but 2, both of which were won by Australia). It’s fairly obscure even in North America, and is clearly most popular in “Western” countries, but it is contested fairly widely.
The Blue Jays didn’t win the division in 2016; the Boston Red Sox did. The Jays settled for a spot in the wild card game, in which they famously beat the Baltimore Orioles in this fashion:
That was fun to post... in the context of the discussion, though, the fact the Blue Jays are based in Canada isn't really "Canadian baseball." Canadian baseball is Canadian players and how they fare in competition against other national teams. Canada is a second tier baseball country; it's pretty good and the Canadian team could on any given day beat any other team, but it's clearly not at the level of the USA, Cuba, Japan, the Dominican, Puerto Rico or Venezuela. Canada is in a class with Taiwan, South Korea, and Mexico. No country would truly dominate any international play.Canada sends a lot more players to the major leagues than it used to. When I was a kid Canadian players were rare; now there’s always a dozen or more kicking around and more have been genuinely first tier stars. In the last 25 years three Canadians have won an MVP Award, something that prior to that never happened once.
I’m honestly not sure why this is, but I think it’s two things. First of all, I think youth coaching in Canada has become much more organized and thus objectively better. I’ve mentioned this before but when I was a kid the coach of a team was just whatever dad had some spare time and a bag of bats; God bless them for their effort but none had ever been taught, or thought to even read a book, on how to teach boys and girls to play baseball. Now I walk by the ball diamonds and every team has 2-3 coaches and they visibly know what they’re doing.
Another might be just that major league scouting is more willing to took abroad. After all, even more money is at stake. They’re found players from places like Brazil and South Africa that had little baseball tradition at all. Last year the first Peruvian and first Honduran player debuted in the majors.
Yeah, like the others said, I am asking about nations that generally perform roughly equivalent (in their respective sport, no matter how obscure it may be) to Team USA in Olympic basketball.
“Considered default favorite to win gold/championship each tournament” would be a good quick-and-dirty criteria definition.
I kinda think you are cherry picking facts to suit your argument. The only game lost in a world cup since 2007? Thats impressive, sure, but it actually just means that they won two tournaments in a row. That isn’t easy but its certainly possible by any elite side in any sport.
The Patriots reached the Super bowl 4 times in 5 years and won 3 of them, did they have a crushing advantage? Or were they just an elite team in a period of dominance?
The OP can clarify if he wants but already said that Brazil didn’t qualify since there were plenty of peers like Germany and Italy able to compete with them. Well if Brazil aren’t an example then neither are the all blacks.
Is it even MLB players? Traditionally those national team type things are like rookies or college players, or second-stringers. We don’t do dream teams anymore.
That’s field lacrosse. In indoor (box) lacrosse, Canada has never lost even a single match in international play.
I’m guessing that no one is going to beat Australia in Aussie Rules Football, or Ireland in hurling, or India in kabbadi, or any other sport that is limited to one or a few countries.
China and Indonesia are very dominant in badminton, especially men’s badminton.
Not in the recent Olympics. Baseball was re-introduced as a medal-awarding sport in 1992; in '92 and '96, the U.S. only fielded amateurs (mostly college players), then in the next three Olympics, while professional players were allowed, MLB wouldn’t allow current major leaguers to play, so the U.S. team was comprised of minor league players.
The lack of MLB players in the Olympics was one of the reasons cited by the IOC for dropping the sport. It’s being re-introduced for the 2020 (now 2021) Games in Tokyo, as an “event-based” sport (i.e., it’s still not on the “core” list of Olympic sports).
Pot meet kettle.
The All Blacks have maintained that level of dominance for over a century not “merely” a purple patch winning 3 titles in 5 years. This is a record not of a preeminence group of players at the peak of their collective powers but over generations.
I would think the All Blacks have been bookies favourite to win every game they have played in my memory for the last 50 years, and likely predating that.
New Zealand has won three of nine World Cups. Very impressive, but not dominance as the OP as defined it. South Africa’s also won three.
New Zealand has won three of nine World Cups. Very impressive, but not dominance as the OP as defined it. South Africa’s also won three.
Olympic snowboarding has been pretty USA-dominated. According to Wikipedia they have 31 medals, with the next closest having 13. Slopestyle and half-pipe in particular always have the American athletes as favorites. That’s not a team sport, but the OP didn’t really say it had to be…
Well there was that glorious period of 24 years where the All Blacks were clearly the best team on the planet for all but about 6 hours.
The New Zealand discussion made me wonder if the US Women’s soccer team would be considered dominant by the same standard.
So… probably. They’ve won 4 of 8 World Cups and 4 of 6 Olympics. They did, however, finish 5th in the most recent olympics. They’ve also had periods where they weren’t considered the best team in the world. Germany was considered tops for a long period in the early 2000s. That being said, they have a non-winning record against only two teams, Poland and Czechoslovakia. The US only played both countries once in the 80s, to a draw. Among more regular opponents, the worst record is 0.600 against Norway. Even against bigger rivals like Germany or China it’s about 0.700.
I suspect this dominance will fade as more European teams put more money into training and coaching, but that’s still a ways off.
True, the US women are outstanding and should they maintain that standard for the next century they’ll be on par with the All Blacks.
For Thailand, it’s takraw.
A US team won America’s cup sailing from 1851 to 1980. Don’t think we will see a streak like that again.