Are The World Cup Games Called Soccer Or Football
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It's football not soccer. Or is it? Actually the word was first coined in England. Everybody
knows that Americans used the word soccer to describe the game that almost everybody
else calls football and this makes people very angry. But is it fair? Take for example
the following comments from the Internet. "It seems that almost every American can't
understand that there is no sport called 'soccer.' It's football! Or the following: "I do
not wish to be in a world which calls it 'soccer.' And knowing the influence that American cultural
exports seem to have on the rest of the world, my fears are definitely justified." Yet
soccer was a commonly used word in Britain until the 1970s and only goes into decline
in usage in the 1980s, exactly when it becomes a popular word in the United States. So we
should get over this. After all, Americans aren't going to stop using the word soccer,
when they have to distinguish it from their version of football. We don't get mad at
Italians because they've got their own word, Calcio, for the game that we normally call
football. So I'd just like to take this opportunity to wish everybody a very happy
soccer World Cup.
