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Great article, very interesting analysis. I have some friends who absolutely love football and understand the metagame a lot better than me - when you watch it
by orf 8y ago
Great article, very interesting analysis. I have some friends who absolutely love football and understand the metagame a lot better than me - when you watch it at first you have no idea how complex the various player movements are, making space, finding space, predictions etc.
On a side note, I really wish they would name football by its proper name: football, not soccer. To the billions of people who follow it globally that's the name of the sport.
- donretag 8y agoAustralians, an ex-English colony who stills technically is under the English monarchy, also calls it soccer. No one is confused. That said, American football is a misnomer and incredibly boring sport. In most languages, it is not called football, and is also neither a combination of foot and ball.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Australians, an ex-English colony who stills technically is under the English monarchy. Australians are under the Australian monarchy, which is not the same monarchy as the UK. The same monarch, but not the same monarchy.
- bigger_cheese 8y ago"Football" is kind of a generic term in Australia depending on where in the country you are when you say "I'm going to the Football tonight" you could be talking about Rugby (Either Rugby League or Rugby Union), AFL (Australian Rules Football), or Soccer (The A-League). That said local soccer teams tend to call themselves Football clubs use the initials FC. The local soccer team where I live is "Sydney FC". I will say A-League games are pretty good to go to the atmosphere at live games is a lot better than Rugby League games. The crowd really gets into it. My friend is a season ticket holder and he drags me along to A-League games semi-regularly and even sitting in the members area at the matches is pretty good.
- kerng 8y agoIn the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter at all if a country calls it soccer or football. Personally, I like the word soccer more when speaking English. I just never understood why American Football is actually called football...its is more like "handball".
- derefr 8y agoAmerican football is an evolution of rugby, which is properly "rugby football." Rugby football started the "picking up and carrying the ball" thing. The more interesting question is why rugby football is called football. But I guess, in modern parlance, it often isn't.
- lenzm 8y agoOne theory is that it was a word for sports played on foot as opposed to horseback.
- jjeaff 8y agoIn Spanish, they call it fútbol, rather than football, and in Chinese, I think it is pronounced something like Zúqiú. Most Southeastern Asian countries don't call it football or a variation thereof. Australians and parts of the British isles call it soccer I believe as well. Things are named and pronounced differently in different languages. The fact is, "football" was already taken in the American vocabulary by the time soccer rose to popularity in the US.
- orf 8y agoIsn't the spanish version just Football, but in Spanish?
- losvedir 8y agoEh, it might as well be the equivalent of "soccer" (a meaningless made up word), since the Spanish word for neither "foot" nor "ball" are in the name. (In contrast to Chinese's zuqiu which is literally "foot" "ball").
- barrkel 8y agoSoccer is short for association football, formed analogously to rugger, which is short for Rugby football.
- rbonvall 8y agoAnother name for the sport in Spanish is "balompié", which comes from "balón" (ball) and "pie" (foot), but it's rarely used.
- lern_too_spel 8y agoIn a sense. "Fùt" is not a Spanish word, and "bol" means "bowl." They just use the English word for the game, written phonetically in Spanish.
- sleavey 8y agoNo part of the British Isles calls it soccer. The game in its current form [1], and the name "football" [2], were invented there. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football#Establishment_of_modern_codes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football#Establishment_of_mode... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(word)#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(word)#Etymology
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Larrikin 8y agoThere are lots of words that are different in American English, soccer is just one of them. Also not every language refers to it as football. In Japanese they call the game soccer as well.
- franciscop 8y agoIn Japan it's mixed; people call it "soccer", official organisms call it "football". I have definitely heard both of them used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_in_Japan#Name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_in_Japan#Name
- rpedela 8y agoWho you calling an official organism? :)
- marcoperaza 8y agoFiveThirtyEight is an American operation with, I imagine, overwhelmingly American readership. To Americans, the sport is called "soccer". Why be purposefully confusing, given that to just about the entire country, "football" means American football?
- orf 8y agoThe 2014 world cup reached 3.2 billion people. I don't really care if you have a small regional sport with less than 5% of that viewership that just happens to have a name clash, it would be nice to call football by its proper name. Again, it's petty, but I'm English and it's a pet peeve of mine.
- bane 8y agoHow would we distinguish between the two then? One is almost universally popular here and the other is pretty much ignored entirely. In what universe would what you propose make even the slightest bit of sense?
- Shorel 8y agoYour use of the word 'universally' is, IMO, part of the issue. Your country is not the world or the universe, even if everyday language indicates that. Language use seems to affect subconscious behavior, even if not intended. Anyway, my point is, you have been manipulated through your language.
- bane 8y agoYou are absolutely correct, from now on I will call soccer "Chuk-ku" because that's what it's called somewhere else.
- marcoperaza 8y agoWhy should people in the US care what people elsewhere like to watch or what they call it?
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- 0xcde4c3db 8y agoThe proper name is "Association football", from which "soccer" was formed.
- bane 8y agoWe already have a more popular sport called football. If those billions of people ever imported it, I'm sure they'd give it the wrong name as well. https://www.britannica.com/story/why-do-some-people-call-football-soccer https://www.britannica.com/story/why-do-some-people-call-foo...
- lackbeard 8y agoMaybe they'd call it "gridder".
- lenzm 8y ago- Association Football - American Football - Canadian Football - Gaelic Football - Aussie Rules Football - Rugby Union - Rugby League There are a lot of (related) sports called football. The English shortened Association to Soccer and the name stuck in The States, Canada and other places. It's just as proper as football.
- TheAceOfHearts 8y agoI think this is true for most sports. I find most sports absolutely boring when I watch em alone, but they become incredibly engaging when you have someone to explain all the intricacies and details to you. I remember going to a Superbowl party with some coworkers, and one of em absolutely blew me away with their game knowledge. I've never enjoyed a Superbowl party as much as that one. He was making tons of calls and explaining everything in a really friendly and approachable way. It was impossible to not be at the edge of your seat as you watched each play being made. I'm pretty sure this also extends to eSports, like StarCraft 2. Since I was pretty hooked on the game I watched tons of games and I understood the game pretty well for a few years. A lot of my sports-loving friends were pretty skeptical of the whole "eSports" thing, but they became true believers when I invited em over and gave me play by play explanations of what was going on.
- orf 8y ago> He was making tons of calls and explaining everything in a really friendly and approachable way. It was impossible to not be at the edge of your seat as you watched each play being made. I had a similar experience and it's really nice, you realise you miss so much of the actual game if you just follow the ball blindly. That being said it's still enjoyable. Cheers to all the people who take the time to explain the game like that to others!
- yomly 8y agoThe other side of a game like football that makes it so interesting is that the part of the game that involves technique - i.e. the ball kicking part is by its nature very dynamic. Passing, receiving and shooting is going to be comparatively far more unstructured than other technically difficult activities. (consider something like swimming, gymnastics or archery). As a result, a great deal of the actions you will see will be necessarily improvisory - which makes those moments of rare brilliance all the more amazing. Especially given the stakes often at hand during these moments. If something like gymnastics is like classical music recitals, then football is like jazz music ensemble
- pdpi 8y ago“Soccer” is closer to being the correct word though, because it’s specific. There’s many types of football, and in Europe we usually use the word to mean “association football” specifically, as opposed to “rugby football”, “Gridiron football”, “Australian rules football” or a number of other games named football. It was in Oxford, where both Rugby and Association football are commonly played at the university level, that the term soccer came up, as an abbreviation of “association”, in the same vein as rugby football is referred to as rugger — the -er ending is a common form of local slang, and is why Boris Johnson is often referred to as Bozzer.
- mamon 8y ago"Football" is a very specific term, which means "game played with foot (feet)". The fact that some moron called another game "American footbal" when they should have called it "American rugby" does not justify renaming this beautifull game to "soccer".
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoWhilst I agree that American football bears a greater resemblance to Rugby football; Rugby football, like Association football ("soccer") is another style of football game. Soccer isn't called that because of American football, the name "soccer" arose in UK where lots of towns have their own style of football game. It obviously caught on as a name in USA because they also have a naming conflict. I too hate the name soccer, because of what I had inculcated in to me as a child.
- kerng 8y agoTo give some perspective, it's called football because these types of sports are played on foot and not on horseback.
- filmor 8y agoWikipedia gives this as an "alternative etymology", the primary one still being that it was being played by kicking a ball around, analogous to handball.