Soccer or football?
It’s called “football” because you KICK THE BALL WITH YOUR FEET.
Unlike American Football WHERE YOU MAINLY THROW THE BALL WITH YOUR HANDS.
The above was a comment made on The World website on the Language of Soccer.
Americans call the English usage of football jargon as snobbery. The English look down on the American-style of soccer lacking finesse and players being just 'hunks of meat'. It does go beyond just the language. It's about a cultural class between Europe and America. A stereotypical European view is to see Americans as loud, lacking taste and dressing badly. In America, soccer is considered mostly a sport for women. It's no small wonder that the Americans have dominated the women's game. In American, real men play football.
America has a long way to go before it gets being a dominant world power in football, so till that happens I think it's fair to call it football.
2 comments:
While I don't really have a big issue with the term soccer being used to refer to football, it really pisses me off is when people call it soccer because they associate football with 'American football'. People go on and on about English snobbery in calling it football, but somehow the same people don't notice the American arrogance in telling the world that the sport should be called as only they and couple of other countries in the world call it Only 3 countries officially refer to the game as 'soccer' namely USA, Canada and Australia, while the other 200 odd member nations of FIFA call it football. When the US does maaz about something as important to the world as football, is there any doubt that everyone hates the US? :P
@Aditya
Right!
I highly recommend the book that was mentioned in the article "How Soccer Explains the World - Foer". A lot of points in the article were 'borrowed' from the book.
Of course, the book doesn't really explain the world, but rather explains soccer in different countries. To add to your point, one presumes that Foer knows the difference between the two. I can see why Foer, an American soccer fan had to use the term 'soccer' instead of the correct 'football' to avoid the misguiding users in the bookshop aisle.
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