I very much appreciate your comment. I also don't have a good understanding of the "fútbol" kerfuffle, if it indeed is offensive to some people. But at worst it

I very much appreciate your comment. I also don't have a good understanding of the "fútbol" kerfuffle, if it indeed is offensive to some people. But at worst it'd seem to be on a par with folks mockingly pronouncing the name of a Minneapolis-based department store chain as "Tar-ZHAY". Why drop into French 'dialect'? Because you're communicating a point about its relative sophistication using (indeed) a stereotype, but not, I think, a particularly harmful one. And English has been picking up foreign words (often where there was already a native equivalent) for their concepts and connotations forever. I think there's a distinction to be made between referring to a chic party as a "soirée", or soccer as "fútbol", and switching into a bad Italian accent to describe criminal debauchery.