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 :In England, the team is always referred to as ""England"", or ""the England team"", and almost never ""the English team"". ""England"" is the name of the team and it is a national football team. We use ""Manchester City football club"" instead of ""Mancunian Metropolitan football club"". This also helps us avoid problems with teams where the adjective is not the best way to describe the team; to quote from talk:England national football team: 
 ::""It also makes the pages easier to follow if all the international team pages take their national name rather than the associated adjective - what do you call someone from New Zealand, anyway? How do you distinguish between the Republic of Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo without using the name of the country? What about ethnic Croats who play for Serbia and Montenegro or ethnic Mongolians who play for China - is the best way to refer to the team really as Serbian or Chinese? Finally there is the potential problem of references like American football team. All very confusing unless as much ambiguity is removed as possible. 
 ::So that's why... - Madw "" 
 :I know this system seems somewhat counter-intuitive at first, but I hope this has cleared things up.  •  "