So I'm guessing you mean the canarins, but that's as far as I got.

Sorry for the late response, been feeling ill.

Twelve people, who were selected to take part in a non-sports game, were given the Portuguese nickname same as the most successful football team in FIFA World Cups.

"The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power."

When you first gave the "non-sports" hint, I figured it would be that sort of "game", and tried two or three common ones...one of which I believe is the solution...especially because there's a "character" with a Portuguese name in it...but I couldn't figure out what this had to do with nicknames such as "Canarinho", "Amarelinha", "Verde-amarelo", "Pentacampeão", "Esquadrão de Ouro" or "El Scratch". I just figured out which "nickname" you had in mind...but that's not actually the team's nickname? Or did you mean to say the word for the nation representation was the nickname for the "team" in the show?

Just curious, what sort of game were you thinking?

The word does have a meaning by itself but that football team is also known by that word and called by it, even for people who know nothing of Portuguese. So it's no longer just a word, if that's what you're asking?

You mean, post-hint? Battle royale, Japan's favorite. Pre-hint, I had fun trying to find out which sports are played with 12 people teams. In case anyone is wondering, Canadian football and female lacrosse :) I see. I don't really care much for football, and the Wikipedia article makes no mention of that particular nickname (WBGhiro also posted "canarins", so obviously we had the same thought and got side-tracked by the article), so it was unclear to me.

Actually, it is used in the first paragraph. ;)

I know, hence my previous question. It's part of the official name of the team, and it's used as such, not as the nickname.

Ah, I get what you're saying. To be honest, for those of us who don't know Portuguese, most of us won't even know that the word actually means something anyway.

Okay, I've decided to wrap up this thread and let it fade into oblivion... Within the short few weeks of being very active on this forums, there were already more than a handful instances of older posters talking down to others with very condescending tones. This isn't even about trolls or something like that, sigh...

Anyway, I won't be posting here anymore. If you're interested to continue this game or the discussion about anime/manga, it's better to start a new thread since I won't be around to update the named list in the first post. Thanks to everyone who took part thus far, it has been fun and interesting!

Pls don't leave, I will post sad anime girls if you do. You are forcing my hand here.

Now you've done it, the floodgates are opened

Does this count? Sorry, I'm a monster.

Perhaps this fits...