The World Cup Sides You've Never Heard of

It used to be that if you wanted a national football team, you first had to have a nation for it to represent. But next month an inter-national competition designed for countries that remain unrecognized by Fifa, not to say most of the rest of the world, will take place in the wannabe nation of Sapmi (Lapland, more or less). The first match of the Viva World Cup 2008, Sapmi v Iraqi Kurdistan, kicks off on July 7 at 11pm.

The first Viva World Cup was held in 2006, but due to political arguments, logistical difficulties (the venue had to be switched from Northern Cyprus to Occitania) and visa problems, only four teams participated. This time there are five men's teams - the other three are Syriac, Padania and Provence - and two women's (Sapmi and Kurdistan).

The tournament has been set up by the New Federations Board, established to represent nations which aren't recognized as sovereign states. Its members include Monaco (not to be confused with the club side), Tibet, Zanzibar, Somaliland, Romani Nation (representing Romani people around the world), South Moluccas, Rijeka (Croatia's third largest city, which was briefly a free state in the 1920s) and the Chagos Islands.

Some of the claims to independence are in deadly earnest (provisional member Chechnya, for example), while others are more fanciful. Even Sealand, a micronation set up in 1967 on an abandoned steel platform in the North Sea, six miles off Suffolk, fields a national team, though in their case they have appointed Danish side FC Vestbjerg to play on their behalf.

Whatever the quality of the football (the score of the 2006 final between Sapmi and Monaco was 21-1), you have to admire the collective optimism on display.

If the self-proclaimed Republic of Saugeais (in eastern France near the Swiss border) is willing to believe the fairy tale of its own statehood, then you've got to believe that they have what it takes to beat Easter Island.