World Cup 2010

[redbirdjazzz]

Not sure which soccer thread this should go in, but here it is:

It’s football to you, soccer to me
By Martin Rogers, Yahoo! Sports

Follow Martin Rogers on Twitter at @mrogersyahoo

JOHANNESBURG – No matter how much the United States continues to emerge as a competitive World Cup nation, there is little doubt that the international perception of American soccer will always be doused with suspicion.


The roots of calling the beautiful game "soccer" started in a surprising place.
Why? Because Americans don’t even call the sport by its proper name, of course. They don’t call it “football.” They call it “soccer.”

In the USA, football is that game that dominates winter Sundays and features Lycra, helmets and men so large they should come with their own zip code.

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Elsewhere, football is football. The round-ball sport, the beautiful game, with its biggest prize to be handed out here on July 11.

Soccer? Pah, a silly American term created by a nation that has its own national obsession.

No country has been snootier toward the USA’s use of the term “soccer” than England. Before the Group C opener between the two sides in Rustenburg, the Sun newspaper even ran a spoof front page urging Fabio Capello’s side to win the “soccerball world series.”

But let’s take a halftime break here.

Coupled with their team’s humiliating exit from the World Cup it might be another rude awakening to the Brits that soccer isn’t an American term, it is actually an English one. And it isn’t some modern fad that shows disrespect to the world’s most popular sport, it dates back to the earliest days of the game’s professional history.

Indeed, until the last few decades, even Englishmen would routinely refer to their favorite pastime as soccer, just as often as they would say football.

Clive Toye, an Englishman who moved to the U.S. and became known as the father of modern American soccer, bringing Brazilian legend Pele to play for the New York Cosmos, takes up the story.

“Soccer is a synonym for football,” said Toye, who helped launch the North American Soccer League in the late 1960s. “And it has been used as such for more years than I can count. When I was a kid in England and grabbed a ball to go out and play … I would just as easily have said: ‘Let’s have a game of soccer’ as I would use the word ‘football’ instead. And I didn’t start it.”

To trace the origin of “soccer” we must go all the way back to 1863, and a meeting of gentlemen at a London pub, who congregated with the purpose of standardizing the rules of “football,” which was in its infant years as an organized sport but was growing rapidly in popularity.

Those assembled became the founding members of the Football Association (which still oversees the game in England to this day). And they decided to call their code Association Football, to differentiate it from Rugby Football.

A quirk of British culture is the permanent need to familiarize names by shortening them. “My friend Brian Johnston was Johnners,” said Toye. “They took the third, fourth and fifth letters of Association and called it SOCcer. So there you are.”

So forget that English condescension and carry on calling it soccer, safe in the knowledge that you’re more in tune with the roots of the sport than those mocking Brits.

Obligatory Linkage

[Centreville]

The Dutch have beaten Brasil. 2-1. Wow. The landscape of the WC has changed

[Freed Roger]

The Dutch have beaten Brasil. 2-1. Wow.

Why did i open this thread? I was going to watch that later. I saw the Brazil goal - they were looking dominant at the time - so this is really surprising.

[Centreville]

sorry about that.

[TimeForGuinness]

The Dutch have beaten Brasil. 2-1. Wow. The landscape of the WC has changed

This is almost a bigger story than the World Cup winner.

[Centreville]

True. Meanwhile, The U.S. are kicking themselves right now..

[greenback44]

True. Meanwhile, The U.S. are kicking themselves right now..

Fortunately they're the US, so they keep missing.

The Brazilians had an own goal. Ouch.

[Freed Roger]

See now the curse of the Nike commercial -

The carnage:
England Rooney, Theo Walcott
France-Franck Ribery, Patrice Evra
Ivory Coast Drogba
Brasil Ronaldinho , Silva
Italy Fabio Cannavaro
US-Donovan, Howard
Portugal C Ronaldo

Tennis Federer out at Wimbeldon

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idLG6jh2 ... r_embedded#!][/youtube]

Watch for spain to fall soon to clear out the bunch.
Andres Iniesta, Cesc Fabregas, Gerard Pique

Lets just ignore Kobe Bryant's appearance since NBA isn't a sport.

[Tambourine Man]

The Dutch are a pretty damn good team.

/serves Dunga right for not choosing Ronaldinho

[MrSaigon]

The Dutch didn't lose a game in qualifying. And haven't lost in the World Cup. I wonder if any team has ever gone all the way like that.

Did anyone see that bizarre Dutch corner kick? I figure it was just an inadvertent touch, but then the way the guy just took off after he tapped it was quite strange.

As far as own goals go, that wasn't a throw yourself off a bridge score. In fact, the vuvuzelas may have been a factor, if he couldn't hear the keeper coming or something.

Who decides if it's an own goal or otherwise anyway?