Discussion for article #223683
Watching the players collapse in the heat might be the only thing entertaining about soccer. Hopefully none of the players will be permanently injured or killed playing there. It really is an insane decision.
The asshole sportscaster known as Jim Rome, whose entire livelihood depends on the Bigmouth Demographic, once said soccer is not a sports, it’s an activity., like bowling or croquet.
This means two things:
A, The adage about a stopped clock being right twice a day is even more true.
B. Jim Rome is STILL an asshole
Man, I just want to see the size of those air conditioners!
Yeah. Only the single most popular sport in the world (and even the US is catching on)
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Along with the bribery the Qataris insisted the matches would be done in domed stadiums with “space-age” air-conditioning systems – and then the stadiums would be dismantled and donated to poor countries. That is not snark, people! That was their actual presentation, and the only way a proposal that ridiculous could have passed is if money changed hands.
BTW I am a rabid football fan (It’s not soccer, it’s football, and they were calling it that long before the NFL was even around), and I would be horrified to watch what will surely be deaths from heat exhaustion – kind of like the deaths suffered by the slave labor who are building the stadiums.
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Compare worldwide ratings of the WC final to worldwide ratings of the Super Bowl. The numbers aren’t even close! WC wins by a landslide!
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I like both as it happens.
I believe it is perfectly logical for Americans to distinguish between the 2 sports by calling one soccer (which was heavily in use in England in the 50s and a derivative of Association Football, it’s original name), and call out my countrymen who use it as a stick
Thoroughly enjoyed a day at AT&T ballpark yesterday too - I don’t get why people can’t enjoy a wide range of sports. I even try to like basketball and hockey (it’s a struggle, but I try!)
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See, you can be funny if you try
Caught the entirety of this epic rant last night.
I’m a huge futbol fan (Arsenal/EPL)-- and this takedown was amazing-- and conflicting.
The truth about FIFA is damningly ugly.
Makes the Vatican look like Girl Scouts.
Settled nations will crumble before FIFA does.
jw1
It’s all about the Benjamins…
With FIFA?
More like ingots.
jw1
Go Gunners!
I define a sport as something on which Vegas oddsmakers will take money. Soccer? Probably a sport. NASCAR? Probably not.
My 2¢; YMMV.
Hockey shouldn’t be hard for you; it’s football on ice. Minus the headers, of course.
Oh, I love ALL sports, including the NFL, and AT&T is IMHO the best baseball stadium in the U.S. (Also love the Giants – used to live in the Bay Area.) I guess I’m starting to get a little parochial about the football, and I was sick to death of FIFA’s obvious corruption long before John Oliver started kicking it around.
No, he can’t.
Sorry, but you are wrong about soccer being called football before American football. For a very intersting read of why the Brits stopped calling Soccer (short for Association Football) by its proper name (short version: the upper class was basically looking down on it as a peasant’s game), I recommend reading this article:
The important bit:
In the beginning, the newly standardized Rugby and Soccer were
football sports for “gentlemen”, primarily being played by the upper
echelons of society. However, these two forms of football gradually
spread to the masses, particularly Soccer as Rugby didn’t really catch
on too well with the lower classes. This resulted in the name switching
from “Soccer” and “Association Football”, to just “Football”; with the
first documented case of the sport being called by the singular term
“Football” coming in 1881, 18 years after it was first called “Soccer”
or, officially, “Association Football”.
The game gradually spread throughout the world under the lower class
name of “Football”, rather than “Soccer” as the “gentlemen” called it.Â
The problem was, though, that a lot of other countries of the world
already had popular sports of their own they called “Football”, such as
the United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South
Africa, to name a few. In these countries, the name “Soccer” was and,
in some, still is preferred for this reason.
For those keeping track at home, the first formal game of American Football was played between Princeton and Rutgers on November 6th, 1869, long before the Brits started using the word to describe Soccer.
You can’t see the ball though.
Returning to the FIFA corruption, Sepp Blatter now more than suggesting that it’s all about racism. A man who has had to be dragged kicking and screaming to eradicate racism in the world of football