Yep. I am pretty sure that “Inverting the Pyramid” (great soccer book) talks about it.
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Apple TV to Be Exclusive Home of Major League Soccer Starting in 2023
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Honestly, who gives a flying f- if two countries calls stuff different ways? Soccer was invented in England both as a term and a sport, and both as a term and a sport it moved through the world.
Are you seriously using other languages to defend this when I clearly stated soccer is the most common term in English? How about Calcio? A word not translated to soccer or football. The FFA also just changed their name from the Australian Soccer Federation not 20 years ago. Yet they still call the sport soccer, and the team nickname is Socceroos. It’s like how many teams in MLS are football clubs in name, yet the sport they play is soccer - a very specific variation of the many rule sets of football. Nobody has any difficulty understanding this when used in writing or conversation. Soccer is the most widely used term, by default of the United States - alone - calling it that.
Seems like yo
Not sure why you are getting so stressed about this. Just stating a fact. Football is the the dominant and normal word for the game worldwide apart from a few countries. Only Americans and Aussies would argue differently and given that it’s not the dominant team sport for any of you i think you have to accept that that’s what it’s called by almost all of the rest of the world where overall it is the dominant team sport and where they mostly call it football not just in English but in their own language too.
It’s not a major issue for any other nationalities that you call it soccer just accept that most of us don’t and arguing things that you read in a book versus what we actually live and remember.
Jock stein said when celtic won the European cup in 1967 way before pele padded his retirement in America
“We did it by playing football. Pure, beautiful, inventive football."
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I do. I called it calcio for 20+ years, which has nothing to do with football or soccer as it means…kick.
Well, it would have been called “association football” to differentiate it. It’s likely that rugby would have been called just “football”, as well, unless there was the need to differentiate it from association football. Remember, football began as a kicking and running sport quite a bit unlike modern rules. It looks like, according to Wikipedia, that Edward the III in the 1300s differentiated from handball and football (but they could also have been regional names for the same game, so maybe that’s not open and shut), and we do have images from the era showing people playing football in such a way where they’re trying to actively catch the ball with their hands. It’s not until the college athletics era of the (especially mid-to-late) 19th Century when the different sets of rules and styles of play were being codified. Prior to that era, “football” would have referred to a very different game than the modern game of association football. And for several years after rules began to be codified, the set of rules you’d refer to as football would depend on where you lived and what university you were associated with. If you attended school at Rugby, you’d call the modern sport of rugby “football” (and Wikipedia notes that students at Rugby had created an established code of football prior to association football). In fact, the primary reason the US plays American football over soccer appears to be that soccer only originated in the 1860s (and arguments about whether carrying the ball and also [perhaps more strongly defended than carrying] about whether it was permissible to kick opposing players in the shins are probably why it originated so late). American football originated in American universities in an attempt to reduce the violence of so called “mob football”, and the idea of kicking the ball around on the ground may have been considered too violent, had it been considered. (Mostly because the opportunity to inadvertently kick players in the shins or to trip them.) Early American football would have resembled rugby just as a matter of course (since it combined a running and carrying game with a kicking game). I don’t think the names and distinctions were ever as clear cut as you make it out to be, at least before the arrival of professional leagues in association football. I can’t find good information about when professionalism (or being paid to play) began to arise in association football, I know it began in baseball in America and rugby football in the late 1880s and early 1990s. It seems likely that the earliest games played under the auspices of what would ultimately become FIFA were probably amateur/semi-pro games, eventually becoming professional. I do think the tendency to cal it football sans modifiers is probably one of those things where Brits emphasize points of distinction between them and Americans as a point of national pride/identity (it’s always easier to focus on the things that divide us when trying to draw boundaries, a narcissism of small differences type situation).
Are you an Italian that moved to America then or an American from Italian family ? Genuine question. I know Italians use the word cálcio in Italian but having had various Italian friends and colleagues through the decades all used the term football when speaking in English as do Italian footballers and coaches in interviews in English. Admittedly none of them were in America.
Born and raised in Italy, moved to Texas about 20 years ago.
I use “soccer” here, mainly because if I say that I like “football” I have then to listen to a 20 minute long comment on the Dallas Cowboys.
Hate to break it out to you, but electronic ads on the sidelines and sponsored jerseys have been around since the middle 1990's, more or less. There's a reason why Chinese companies have been major sponsors of multiple international soccer (football) events in recent years.
Yep, sounds like Texas! I lived in the Dallas-Fort Worth area for a few months for a job training program a few years ago, and I had to pick up some apartment supplies my first day there. It turned out that the nearest Walmart was across the street from AT&T Stadium where the Cowboys play, and the front section of the store was nothing but Cowboys licensed merchandise!
Ha! I know that Walmart well (I go to Texas Rangers games). The good news for soccer fans in DFW is that the North Texas Soccer Club, which is affiliated with FC Dallas plays in the old Texas Rangers stadium (which is at walking distance from AT&T stadium and the new Rangers stadium), which incidentally is also where the new Major League Rugby team plays. Few months from now even Major League Cricket will be in the area!
Will gain exactly 0. There’s no ATV+ subscription requirement. However, MLS will gain many.
And the author is mistaken.
Both Soccer Saturday and Soccer Aid are modern programmes, and they were both made so that they could be packaged and sold to international markets.
When watching Soccer Saturday most people just say they are watching SSN.
Your logic of finding 2 programmes with the name Soccer in them as a vindication for your view point fails massively, especially when you can look at pretty much every single football club in the U.K. a lot of which that date back to the 1800’s, and 99 out of 100 of them if not more will officially be called ‘Something Football Club’. I’m unaware of any team that’s called Soccer club here in the U.K.
The whole argument from Americans about the rest of the world calling the sport wrong or only just starting to call it football instead of soccer is very ignorant. Every country aside from the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand call it football, and have done since it’s inception.
You can’t?
Mate, it’s the very reason why the game was codified in the 1800’s, it is the reason why the English football league came into existence. It was a major contentious issue for allowing or not allowing teams to compete in the FA Cup in England. It predates pretty much any sporting league or system in the world. It is a major building block and development of the game that was steeped into history.
I wish for a Ken Burns documentary on soccer similar to the one he did on baseball.
If the brits didn't want people to call it soccer, they shouldn't have invented the word.
Imagine the US being as bad at basketball as England is at soccer. Hope they enjoy getting relegated to Nations League B.
The author is absolutely not mistaken. It was the most common term used in England until the 1970s and it changed because of the NASL. It was created as a term there. The sport was exported worldwide under the name - which is why every English speaking former colony calls it soccer. The program names I wrote in, not the author. Just to demonstrate that you’re all well aware of what soccer is because of its long history of using that term in the country. It’s an abbreviation of the full name of association football. It’s a specific variant of football, for which there are many football games, not just one. It is not now an American term, and it never was. “Football” is a catch all term, much like “playing ball” is a catch all for basketball, baseball, softball, and others. It’s a simple term used for convenience, not a specific game.
And yes, “football” in the name of teams is equivalent of having “sporting club”. Meaningless. The terms predate the existence of the codified sport of association football. They could also be rugby clubs at this stage, in fact, many are. Rugby is football, after all.
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I was born in and live in England.
Listen to people on this thread in the countries where you claiming they call football something else or used too. It has never been the more widely used name, ever. There might be some outliers in programming and magazine with the name soccer (usually more recently to appeal to a global audience), but it has never been widely used, in fact it is more widely used now than it ever has been.
he really is mistaken and no it was not the most common term used in England until the 1970s. this is not true. Much though it pains me to say it as a Scotsman, England didnt win the Soccer World Cup in 1966, they won at football.
Here's the Guardian Newspapers report on the game, the first sentence is "To the accompaniment of expressions of praise, thanksgiving, and in some cases undisguised disbelief, England became football champions of the world by defeating West Germany 4-2 on Saturday at Wembley. The Article does not mention the word soccer once.
and by the way, if it was the most common term used in England it would have been at use of some sort in Scotland surely? and no I never heard that word growing up until many years later when specifically talking about US Soccer. My dad its in his 70s, was a massive football fan following Celtic all over Europe, ive never heard him use the word soccer and I speak to him once a week, mainly about football and golf.
And in actual fact, when you keep talking about 'created as a term....exported worldwide under that name'... it was slang. not real words. slang. used by English boarding school pupils who called rugby Rugger, so therefore football was Soccer. I can assure you people in Scotland or the north of England didnt use either term. Football was football and rugby was rugby. very clear. I already quoted Jock Stein on winning the 1967 European Cup.
'every English speaking former colony' is a bit disingenuous as there aren't many of them. And the connection isnt that they are former colonies and therefore the English spread the word in the 1970s when there was this miraculous change cos England was jealous that former greats were playing in America aged 35-40 and persuaded the whole world to invent the word football to stick two fingers up at the Americans cos they were so jealous. Its that the list of 'every English speaking former colony' consists of America, Australia and a pile of Caribbean islands, all of which football isnt the number one sport.
If we are looking at countries of the world, of which there are many, I know you dont like guessed at percentages but the vast majority of them call it football, or futbol or futebol. the 'big' football nations call it football however they spell it, apart from Italy who call it calico in Italian but football in English. In the UK its football. in Spain its futbol, in Portugal Futebol.
you say football is a 'catch all term' and yet in the vast majority of the world, no matter where, no matter the language, you say football and they know what you are talking about. Football is the biggest sport in the world.