Lega Federale Calcio Padania

Padania appears on no official map: it is the name the Lega Nord political movement gave to the northern Italy it dreamed of making independent, from the Po valley to the Alps. With no state, no UN seat and no FIFA membership, it still assembled a national football team, formalised in 2008 by the Lega Federale Calcio Padania, and achieved what no unrecognised nation ever had: total domination of stateless football. It won the VIVA World Cup, the world championship of unrecognised teams, three times in a row, in 2008 in Swedish Lapland, in 2009 at home on the shores of Lake Maggiore, and in 2010 on the island of Gozo, with squads full of players seasoned in Calcio's lower divisions. It later moved to CONIFA, where it kept collecting European trophies. Politics aside, it remains one of modern football's most curious episodes: an invented nation with a very real trophy cabinet.