Example:
The A-League is a national competition with 10 teams, including 9 from around Australia and 1 from New Zealand. There are two teams from each of Sydney and Melbourne and one team from each of Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, Newcastle and the Central Coast of New South Wales. Finally, there is a team from New Zealand, being Wellington Phoenix. The regular season games are played in the Australian summer, from October to April, when each team plays each other team 3 times.
Obviously, all this means is that all the soccer teams in the Australian soccer league are from their respective places. But why not just simply say there are two teams from Sydney and Melbourne? What's the implication of using each of in this particular case? As for the second example, the use of each of can be, I guess, somewhat justified because if we get rid of it, then the sentence may sound like there is only one team representing all those cities altogether which is of course wrong—there is always one team per city. Even though I perfectly understand what it says, I still have a problem comprehending it in terms of grammar. Could you please clear things up for me a little bit?
Best Answer
Each of ... is used to talk about things in a list or a group, considered individually and is thus singular. It's very similar to every, but every is more focused on the whole group and each more on individuals.
Let's imagine there are three students in a class: Alex, Mary and James.
Compare:
This means that, in total, when we count all the students' cars, there are only two cars.
This means that, in total, there are six cars. Two cars belongs to Alex, another two to Mary and the other two to James.
Therefore, if we say two football teams from each of Sydney and Melbourne, it is similar to the second sentence, i.e.
We cannot say two football teams from Sydney and Melbourne to convey the same meaning; it would be mean something similar to the first sentence, i.e.
Note that two football teams from Sydney and Melbourne may imply that one team is from Sydney and the other from Melbourne. This usually happens when the number of the things in the group or list is the same as that of the things we talk about.