Why do smaller countries?

           

That backstory only adds to the existing pressure on England to get a result in Podgorica on Tuesday night - a game in which defeat will make it much harder for Roy Hodgson's team to qualify automatically for next summer's World Cup in Brazil.How can this be so? Why does sport throw up such anomalies, where countries with relatively small resources and small populations can challenge far bigger and wealthier nation states?This may be explained by cultural differences - many sporting codes are developed from the British public school system and so are inherently 'westernised'. But Japan and other emerging Asian economies such as Korea have had more than half a century to use their resources to deliver greater sporting success than so far achieved.Montenegro lead Group H and are now considered a powerful force in European football, despite their size and relatively recent arrival on the international scene.But in both cases it is hard to believe there is no direct correlation between the lack of opportunities and life chances in those societies and economies and a desire to achieve through sport. Sport has also been identified by those countries as a means to earn national prestige that other fields of endeavour would never deliver. By any other measure this should be a non-contest. Montenegro's population is 625,000 - just over 1.2% of England's. They have no national league to speak of, their best players play abroad and their national stadium is a fraction of the size of Wembley.