Definitely an odd wording. However, I have some speculation as to why it is this way.
Maclean's is a Canadian publication and I think many Canadians have a special interest in the UK, and I think the demographics of Maclean's readership likely reinforces this.
Additionally, I would guess that this is some semantic ambiguity introduced via morphological clipping where the author is using European as a shortened form of Continental/Mainland European. It's a fairly common device used to remove excess verbiage especially when reusing the same terms over and over. Pragmatically, when in context being contrasted against Briton, it becomes more clear that the author means Europeans other than Brits.
A similar example could be "all squares have equal sides whereas rectangles do not". It is pragmatically more likely that I mean _non-square_ rectangles even though my wording is ambiguous or straight up incorrect taken at face value.
So I'd guess it's attributable to the psychological primacy of the UK amongst the readership of this publication, semantically confused via a common morphological device, and ultimately disambiguated by the pragmatics of contrasting a part with its whole.
Yeah - I'm a Brit, I read it as a shorthand for continental Europe. Just a shorthand way of differentiating a team of Brits from a team of other Europeans (and Canada).
Maclean's is a Canadian publication and I think many Canadians have a special interest in the UK, and I think the demographics of Maclean's readership likely reinforces this.
Additionally, I would guess that this is some semantic ambiguity introduced via morphological clipping where the author is using European as a shortened form of Continental/Mainland European. It's a fairly common device used to remove excess verbiage especially when reusing the same terms over and over. Pragmatically, when in context being contrasted against Briton, it becomes more clear that the author means Europeans other than Brits.
A similar example could be "all squares have equal sides whereas rectangles do not". It is pragmatically more likely that I mean _non-square_ rectangles even though my wording is ambiguous or straight up incorrect taken at face value.
So I'd guess it's attributable to the psychological primacy of the UK amongst the readership of this publication, semantically confused via a common morphological device, and ultimately disambiguated by the pragmatics of contrasting a part with its whole.