Dissolving England as an entity with all of it's history would be a very difficult pill to swallow even on a purely emotional level. Do we start sending Manchester United to the world cup for example? What would the flag look like?
I am not saying split England into different countries, but split regions into federal districts. That has nothing to do with separation of England, does the USA send states to the world cup? I don't know what you are saying there.
Growing up, I had absolutely no problems comprehending that my county (cumbria) was part of a region (the north-west), which is why we got Manchester's news on the TV. That region was then part of a country, and a few countries made up our nation.
We already have these tiers of identity. We already have borough seats, county seats, city seats, etc. If we federalized the UK along the same sort of regional identities the BBC does, I don't believe we'd suddenly lose any county/country/national identity.
(Perhaps not exactly the same boundaries, but I can't help looking at their map and thinking - yeah, that's a good start)
Presumably he's comparing it to the existing situation of Scotland. But Scotland (and Wales) of course is a somewhat different situation in that it is considered a constituent country of the UK for historical reasons, which wouldn't be likely to be the case for regions in a federal UK.
If you split England into states then it ceases to exist in any meaningful way.
The USA model is simple, you have the federal government and you have the states. Thus you send a USA team to the world cup. Under this model, we would have to send a British team to the world cup rather than an England team.
It's less of a problem for the Germans because they are comparatively more invested in europe, for example using the currency.
As a sovereign nation, the UK has virtually limitless freedom in deciding its internal structure. You can pick and choose which things are decided at which level, and how different subdivisions might be grouped into higher levels for some purposes but not others. You are not required to follow any established model -- and you are certainly not required to follow the US's rigid structure.
If you want to keep sending an England team, keep sending an England team. Big deal.
Germany doesn't send Saxony and Bavaria to the world cup.
As I noted in a different comment: The current situation of an England team is an historical oddity: England, Scotland and Wales are considered constituent countries of the UK. Only a handful of countries worldwide have constituent countries, and the exact details of in what context they are treated as countries vary greatly.
But if the UK was turned federal, there's no reason why the new federal entities would be considered countries any more than e.g. the states of Germany are, even though in the case of the states of Germany, many of the states still closely match countries with a long history as independent states.
Sure, it's workable but how people would feel about it is another question. It would probably transpire that the countries of Wales and NI would both map directly to states with the same names (with powers). You then have a country of England (with no powers) broken into constituent states (with powers) and the whole thing starts to look like a CGP grey video.
Historically, Germany is quite different to the UK for obvious reasons. I also suspect Scotland , Wales etc would be more likely to table flip when dealing with a UK parliament than say Saxony would.
