Ok, so it loses a little when you type it.
But when sung, it’s quite different. Listen to Ella and Louie do it right!
But it raises the question, is football football or is soccer football.
And before I get started, let me just say, I am quite over the World Cup, FIFA, and the vuvuzela.
Oh, I’m soooooo over the vuvuzela.
Now, UP loves culture and cultures, loves different things, loves to learn, and loves to experience.
But I’m over soccer too, er, excuse me, football.
Most of the world calls “soccer” football. In the US, we have our own football, the greatest sport in the world (Go Bucks), so to keep us from getting confused, we called the other football, soccer.
The rest of the world didn’t pick UP on it.
Except maybe Australia, and oddly enough, South Africa.
Soccer is English.
Very English. They created it, or at least take credit for it.
Back in the 1800s when Victoria was on the throne and the sun never set on the British Empire, wealthy English boys went to strict and snooty private boarding schools. Apparently there was a great deal of pent UP tension, and some of it was being directed “improperly”.
So, to combat the evils of mankind, the British decided a little outdoor physical activity would lighten the mood, release some stress, and have the added advantage of exercise.
Voila! Football, er soccer, er rugby, er whatever.
See, that was the problem, there were too many games of “football” being played, with too many rules.
So, Cambridge University came UP with the Cambridge Rules (how very original) for ‘football”, er soccer, er whatever. The rules were written at Trinity College, which is at Cambridge. There was a meeting. Obviously, the British were bored as heck and had conquered the world anyway.
A bunch of self-appointed, self-important, big-wigs showed UP. Eton, Harrow, Rubby, Winchester, and Shrewsbury were all represented.
Not everyone playing footsoccerball bought in. Most notably, the boys at Sheffield. A bunch of guys from - holy crap how did this happen – a public school, told the Cambridge boys to kiss their scones and formed the Sheffield Football Club. They came UP with a distinct set or code of rules and formed the Sheffield Football Association.
There were meetings, conventions, street fights,
but eventually, most nations fell in lock-step with the Brits and started playing soccer, er football, er whatever the British way. And they all called it football.
Except for the US.
After giving the Brits a double ass kicking in 1789 and 1814, we’ll call it soccer as long as we want to!
