Then there is the European Team, with one player nominated by each national football club in Europe regardless of ability.

The team has three coaches but they aren't actually allowed to tell the players what to do. Instead they coach under a democratic "one player one vote" system, with all the players, good and bad, having a say in how they'll train and play.

When the team was first formed obviously the best players from the big well-financed football clubs were much better than the best players from the small rather amateur national clubs but the architects of the idea ignored all that and had faith that rather than drag the team down all the bad players would play better and support the good players.

But that didn't happen. As time went on it became clear that the bad players if anything got worse, not better, and rather than support the better players they got used to being carried by the good players and grew lazy. They trained less and on the back of their fame and status as international players they lived the high life off the field. Anyone would have thought they really were international football players rather than pretend ones.

But the problems didn't end there because as well as carrying the bad players on the field, the good players also fell into carrying the bad players off the field and started lending money to the bad players to help them retain their off-the-field image. That was OK for a while until the famous "General Form Collapse" (GFC) in 2008, which affected all teams and all players. Suddenly the top players found themselves a bit short of cash and wanted their money back, whilst all the bad players found themselves owing a lot of money with little or no earnings.

The players fell to bickering amongst themselves but rather than admit the whole structure was an unmitigated disaster they continued to hang on hoping that one day the bad players would miraculously turn over a new leaf, make an effort, get fit, play well and earn enough money to pay them back. But they didn't.

It was all getting a bit desperate when suddenly, after months of pressure on the coaches to find a new sponsor, one of the coaches made the announcement that they were going to spend 60 billion euro a month getting the team back on its feet. That was well received until it became clear that rather than the money coming from some miraculous benefactor the current players would be asked to contribute the money themselves in unequal measure.

The players were confused until the coach explained that the key to the scheme was that the players didn't actually have to earn the money to get the team back on its feet (God forbid!) but could instead, through the marvels of computing, just credit themselves with new money for free and contribute that. Relief all round.

But of course there's nothing for nothing and the way the scheme worked was rather like a private placement in a small resources stock. By issuing new money for nothing, no value was created but all existing money became worth less and all that really happened was that the scheme effectively transferred value from the people who already had money or assets to whoever received the free money, in this case the coach and the team, and of course the investment banks they gave the free money to.

In a beautiful twist of inequity the scheme also meant that the value of debt was devalued as well. So basically the scheme transferred value from those who owned money to those who owed money. Incredible stuff. Of course this annoyed all the rich people who rather than borrow money had worked hard for it, but they were rich so no one cared about them. The value of money hit an 11-year low, but everyone retained the faith that one day this team will come good.

Breaking News: Greece has just substituted its player and the first thing the new one did apparently was walk into the changing room and tell all the good players he owed money to "F... off". Incredible. Not sure how that's going to work out but it can't be good, can it?