Comments on: Reuters Soccer Blog

By: Mashman

Mashman — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 03:50:52 +0000

I know it’s poor form to let a few facts get in the way of a good meaningless argument but here they are:

The proper name for Soccer is called Association Football (trawl the FIFA website and you’ll find that in their statues).
Generically, the word “football” means any one of a number of codes of football games and specifically means the form of football predominant in the users context. It’s like “Dog” and “Corgi”. All corgi’s are dogs but not all dogs are corgis. IMagine saying “it’s not a corgi, it’s a dog”
Thus an Amercian saying football means American Football, An Irishman means Gaelic etc. a Engishmain means Association Football, etc. Say the word “football” in Melbourne and it only means Australian Rules Football.
Every code has the right to call their game football. They are all derived from ball games played on foot in Europe (as opposed to games played on horseback by the gentry of the time)
The orignal 1863 rules of Association Football allowed for all players to catch the ball, call “Mark” and have free kick. So much for not using the hands. That’s why the goalkeeper still catches the ball.
All football codes evolved, some more and faster than others.
The word soccer was derived by the english in late nineteenth century and was in common use in England in the early 20th century.
Association football never gained much standing in any of the British commonwealth and previous English colonies (where it is usually called Soccer) - it is more a European game than a British game. Most commonwealth nations took up Rugby. Several invented their own forms of football.

Anyone insisting that it’s not soccer it football, is simply demonstrating their complete ignorance.
So if you don’t like the word ’soccer’ then it’s “Association Football” stupid!

By: Coach

Coach — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 16:13:46 +0000

I thought you might be interested in this. It is a link to a middle school soccer team website in Houston. It is pretty funny. Check out the “interesting facts”, “stone face”, “ask the ’stache”, and “photo album” sections. A lot of the boys have chosen your blog to read and report each week in class so it would mean a lot to them. Let us know what you think. Thanks.

-Coach

By: kevin fylan

kevin fylan — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:09:53 +0000

Hi Jan, and thanks for your comment. Just in case you haven’t seen there are a couple of pieces about england’s coach which you can find at the main page, http://blogs.reuters.com/soccer. I’d love to see you comment over there as well. All welcome.

By: Jan

Jan — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 15:28:33 +0000

This is a vey interesting discussion about the history of football, and whether or not you should call it soccer, but it’s not really going to get us anywhere. Let’s start talking about some current football news - e.g. England’s attrocious performance in recent games, culminating in one of the most boring matches I’ve ever seen against Israel. Why is our team so much worse than the sum of its parts, and should McClaren’s head roll asap? (BTW, my opinion is yes)

By: aidy parker

aidy parker — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 17:51:21 +0000

Well, now that the name’s been dragged through hell are we going to debate the “Great game”?
Should proffessional players be penalised for not obeying the games laws? i.e. not retreating 10 yards, claiming throw ins/ fouls/ corners/hand balls, when the referee has clearly seen and made a judgement on any given incident. If as i suspect that upcoming talent is taught to cheat to gain any advantage for the team should the team be penalised?

By: mastic

mastic — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 20:04:53 +0000

Yes,I think differently, the proper terms is football, not soccer. Even if the term soccer was used first time by an european, now is used frequently by the americans, so is american, not an UK term.

By: Jim

Jim — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 12:01:15 +0000

Charles Wreford-Brown (9 October 1866 26 November 1951) is usually credited with inventing the word soccer as an abbreviation for association football.

He was born in Bristol and attended Charterhouse School before going on to Oriel College, Oxford University. He was a keen amateur sportsman and played both cricket and football for the university. He later played cricket for Gloucestershire and football for the Old Carthusians and Corinthians, and captained the English national football team several times between 1894 and 1895.

By: Colin Cunningham

Colin Cunningham — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 01:58:19 +0000

I am surprised by the US vs other argument in this blog. In Australia Soccer was the traditional name for at least the last 70 years (pre US influence), and my travels suggest it is a traditional name in some other countries, particularly those with a UK historical connection. Does this suggest soccer was the global traditional name? So why is there an argument anyway? I have noticed a drive to rename all that was “soccer” in Australia as “football”. Is the passsion of the game being harnessed for commercial benefit? A commercial need to narrow and focus a brand might begin a push for a common name. A clever move would be to associate an alternate brand “soccer” as part of US culture - that would guarantee quick rejection in many places.

By: John

John — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 00:58:46 +0000

Football SHOULD be called football, wherever you are from.
why? simple,because that’s the rules of the game - you kick the ball with your feet. If you were meant to handle the ball, it would be called rugby, or anything else with ball.

with this definition in mind, it makes me wonder why did the founding fathers of american football decide to call it football, if they are supposed handle the ball?????

By: willy250

willy250 — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 23:36:11 +0000

How can anygame that uses”hands” be called “football”?