They’ll be representing more than 200 million people at the World Cup — and hopefully they budgeted for a few interpreters.

Say hello in just about any language to Team Europe, the true wild card in next year’s eight-team hockey tournament. No one knows who from 10-plus countries (outside the continent’s four recognized hockey powers) will eventually appear at the Air Canada Centre, what they’ll have for sweat ers and a logo and, heaven forbid, what anthem will be played if they win the title. Perhaps Canada can loan them The Hockey Song.

“It looks like a very interesting project,” said just-appointed general manager Miroslav Satan. “Almost every other team has a federation behind them or some kind of support. Right now, it’s just a few of us and we have to create everything from scratch.”

Sitting beside the Slovak Satan at the ACC on Wednesday were Slovenian Anze Kopitar, Satan’s countryman Zdeno Chara and team president Franz Reindl of Germany. Canadian born Ralph Krueger will be the coach. The team will likely draw upon players from Austria (Thomas Vanek), Belarus (Mikhail Grabovski), Denmark (Jannik Hansen), France (Antoine Roussel), Latvia (Zemgus Girgensons), Norway (Mats Zuccarello) and Switzerland (Mark Streit).

“The first job is computer work, looking at the list of (23) possible names,” Reindl said. “You know the big names, but there are others. So it’s a lot of work to build up a scouting staff.

“Then you see we have about 50 or 55 players under NHL contract from 15 countries. This makes it really big. We feel the responsibility to grow our game in Europe. This team can do a lot for our game, we’d like to get more fans, more players and we can give back to hockey.

“There will be eight, nine or 10 different countries on this team. This has an impact on the huge population in Europe. There are 200 to 250 million inhabitants who we are representing. This is unique.”

Krueger, who was also named to his post on Wednesday, has worked on both sides of the Atlantic.

“It might be just a little bit weird in the sense of coming together,” Chara said of next year’s training camp. “But once you step on the ice, we’re all professionals, we all want to win. It doesn’t matter who you play with or who you are playing against. I think we’ll have the training camp to build some chemistry.

“This might be my only chance to play in a World Cup. We’re certainly not going to come here and just play for exhibition and let the other team beat us. We’ll come to the best of our ability.”

A year after he walked away from hockey after 1,000 NHL games and a swan song in the KHL, Satan is now swamped with work.

“There’s a lot of issues we have to look at; what do we put on our jersey, what’s going to be our name. And how do we create an identity where these guys are going to feel like a team?”

Kopitar would like to build towards the World Cup with another Stanley Cup in Los Angeles, but can’t wait for next September to roll around. The Europeans will be in the tournament’s first game against Group A opponent Team USA on Sept. 17. They meet the Czechs two days later and Canada 48 hours after that.

“We’re part of Europe,” said Kopitar. “We’re going to play for a little bigger picture than our own countries. We’ll be representing our countries in a different way.”

lance.hornby@sunmedia.ca