Hi there. In this short education post, I would like to talk about learning about countries from international sports. This post is good for young kids and for adults. The inspiration behind this post is from EURO 2020, watching soccer (Champions League), Counter Strike: Global Offensive, tennis and the Tokyo Olympics.
Global Competition
Competition is the biggest thing when it comes to sports. It drives athletes and competitors to work really hard and to push themselves for victory. With global sports the competition is fierce. Winning is really difficult.
Watching international sports does raise awareness of which countries are represented in different sports. Some countries are more well known in certain sports than others. There are cases where lesser known countries have athletes that do win gold medals or win major tournaments.
Trends also occur with countries and athletes over time. In tennis, American tennis players such as Agassi, Sampras & Roddick used to win a handful of Grand Slam tournaments. Nowadays, the Grand slam tournaments in the last 10 or so years were won by Roger Federer (Switzerland), Rafael Nadal (Spain) and Novak Djokovic (Serbia).
Flag Recognition
In a lot of sports programs on TV, you may see country flags beside team names or player names on screen. A game that can be played with young ones or even adults is to guess the country associated with the flag. Some country flags are more common than others which would make for easy recognition. There may be athletes that come from lesser known countries or smaller countries. Country flags from lesser known countries can be hard to recognize.
Other Notes
The world is a big place filled with different people from different places and cultures. As international sports events are usually held at different locations, you can see snapshots of different countries and cities on TV. You may see the country's buildings, people, animals and foods. Some countries and places may surprise you in how nice their major cities look. If you want a better idea of what a country is like, visit the country itself!
When it comes to athletes, talent can come from anywhere. High performing athletes can come from big countries, lesser known countries or from a country whose economy is not great.