[christudor]

If a noun denotes a group of people – even if it's technically a singular noun – it's okay (but not compulsory) to use a plural verb.

The sentences 'Real Madrid have performed well this year' and 'Real Madrid has performed well this year' are both grammatically acceptable, and probably used roughly the same amount.

A related example is the word 'none' (= 'not one'). Technically it should govern a singular verb (e.g. 'None of the players is good enough') but you'll now see it a lot with a plural verb (e.g. 'None of the players are good enough').

[umanwizard]

There are dialectal differences here. “Real Madrid have” is common in British English but would be very rare, possibly to the extent of striking native speakers as an ungrammatical mistake, in American.

[poizan42]

"none" is saying something about all of the players, so how would that be singular? The word "none" is always used in a plural context, like if there is only one player then you won't say "none of the player"

[christudor]

I'm talking about the verb that follows 'none', not the noun.

'None of the team was [singular] prepared' and 'None of the team were [plural] prepared' are both correct.

[poizan42]

You said

> A related example is the word 'none' (= 'not one'). Technically it should govern a singular verb

And I'm questioning why you think "none" should technically govern a singular verb when "none" is normally a non-singular subject.

I'm sure both are being used, and at the end of the day what is correct is determined by how a significant amount of people are using the language. But I just don't understand why you think a singular verb would be more "technically correct"

Did you mean that because you could replace none with "not one" then it should be singular? But that only works because the 'not' applies to the whole sentence, so the remainder is about 'one', i.e. "not (one of the team was prepared)". But that doesn't work for the word none because you can't read it as the 'not' applying to a singular part-sentence.