What's Soccer?
I understand our American visitors sometimes get confused.
Hopefully this picture will explain things a bit more simply:
From the National Handegg League (NHL).
posted by Keir Clarke @ 3:47 PM
19 comments
Friday, February 20, 2009
Hopefully this picture will explain things a bit more simply:
From the National Handegg League (NHL).
19 Comments:
Keir, don't make me explain to you how the word "soccer" was invented by the English for their beloved sport!
bwahahahahahaha, as an american reader i find this fucking great.
NHL = National Hockey League (Canadian-US international league), has nothing to do with Gridiron or "American Football".
NFL - National Football League (or as I like to refer to it the "Not Football League")
The NHL can't stand for the National Hockey League.
Those guys play on ice. If it was called anything it would be called the NHIL, the National Ice Hockey League.
But good try.
I admit the word was invented by the English.
Socca was from university slang for football from an abbreviation of 'Association' in Football Association.
It was a word invented by upper-class idiots to dissociate rugger from the working class game of football.
It has always been a word used by idiots ;)
Keir Clarke: it is the National Hockey league.
No - hockey is a game played by butch girls in pleated skirts.
It's a girls game like rounders (just by pretending it's called baseball doesn't make it a game for grown men).
If NHL stood for National Hockey League the players would all wear pigtails and be called things like Felicity and Henrietta.
no mate thats field hockey.
Egg? No son, that's a football.. What's that thing by his foot? Oh, that's what the tiny bubbles are..!
I kid, I kid. :)
@Brandon The Cambridge Dictionary says a ball is "any object in the shape of a sphere." Therefore that is no ball.
@Anonymous the same dictionary says that hockey is "a game played on a sports field." There's no mention of frozen lakes.
There's no way Americans would call it the NATIONAL Hockey League.
They would surely apply the same logic as they do to the World Series. Therefore if they were to call it anything they would call it the International Hockey League.
When you say they would call it the ICE hockey league you forget that in the States hockey IS ice hockey.
And that league (the NHL) actually is semi-international. There are Canadian teams as well.
Also for the world series, world championships, etc., the US goes to every Olympics and destroys everyone else at basketball, so they've probably earned that right. And no one else in the world really cares about "handegg"...so they probably own that one too. Baseball is boring too so who cares.
Basketball!!!!
Why does the whole of the US always get so excited when the US beats someone like Tuvalu to win the gold medal in the Olympics?
The rest of the world grew bored of the sport about five minutes after it was invented.
It's kind of like Jersey (pop. 90,000) boasting about beating the US in cricket.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_ICC_World_Cricket_League_Division_Five#Final_Placings
If Britain had a team you'd take notice (although there should be teams for the individual countries...an argument for another day I guess).
And basketball is catching up to soccer very rapidly around the world.
It's nothing like Jersey bragging about beating the US at cricket. Because Jersey didn't win the world championship. But the US did.
"And basketball is catching up to soccer very rapidly around the world."
Please, sir, can I have some mushrooms too?
I can see it now, Nigeria - the savanah - rainy season: the basketball doesn't bounce much on the mud, so the locals decide to kick it instead, using two sticks laying on the ground for a goal because the damn ball keeps getting stuck in some giant boabab tree every time they try to get basket...Ahh the extinction of the Worlds' most boring game and the evolution of football (Still the world's #1 by a long shot, excuse the pun...)
I feel there's been a misunderstanding. Football is the world's greatest game, no doubt. Basketball just happens to be the world's second choice.
The world's most boring game is cricket.
And I'm obviously not looking at numbers but if I was I'm fairly certain basketball is catching up. Look at all the great players in the NBA from Africa and europe.
I don't think they got all their practice from kicking it into the basket.
The Cricket World Cup gets about 2 billion viewers. The NBA finals gets about 25 million (most of whom have fallen asleep by half-time).
So cricket is watched by about 100 times more people than basketball. For everyone one person who likes basketball there are 100 who like cricket.
So I could argue that cricket is 100 times more exciting than basketball. Or you could argue that the other 99% of the world are wrong.
Its not actually the other 99% of the world, that's flawed logic. What those numbers say is out of those 2,025,000,000, a little under 99% were watching cricket.
The rest of the world was sleeping.
The other issue with this is that there is an underlying dynamic to basketball in the States that you couldn't see. Many people (myself included) do not believe that the NBA is the most exciting basketball to watch--there is no defense.
The collegiate game inspires much more passion. The Cameron Crazies could give Stratford End a run for their money passion-wise, and this is more exciting.
The world never sees this because TV execs are confused.
Of course TV execs in the States should obviously put more football on. Poker over football? Dear lord...
Handegg! Hahaha, good one.
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