It's hard to find people in the United Kingdom who honestly don't know anything about "football" (and those are called rugby fans!) Most people there have a "side" or "club" they support (they don't say "team" generally.) It's equally hard to find a town of market size or larger who doesn't have a football club where anyone can play.
One of the things I really like about the way the UK does football is that the leagues aren't stagnant and money-powered in the same way professional sports are done in the USA. That's not to say that money isn't a huge part of the game, it is - especially with Premier League giants like Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal. But it's also completely possible to pull off a rags-to-riches dream if your team is amazing - like what happened to AFC Bournemouth. In 2008, they nearly went into liquidation. Today, they're sitting at the top of the Premier League table!
A team that's doing well gets promoted; a team that is doing poorly gets relegated. So, someone can start off from a town club and take it all the way to the top if the talent is there!
Can you imagine that happening in the NBA or NFL? I can't.
Football Pride
People in the UK are quite proud of their football - even though it's been a few decades since they won the World Cup (England's only win was in 1966 - Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have yet to win.)
It's FIFA World Cup time when you're most likely to see the English George Cross flag hung from windows. (Well, for that and the Six Nations Rugby, anyway... sometimes for the Summer Olympics.)
(Image from Pixabay)
Football vs Soccer
British people will often be heard teasing Americans about how we changed the word "football" to "soccer." The same people aren't as pleased to find out that they're wrong.
My son looked it up while we lived there and someone had the misfortune to make this suggestion again.
Although the earliest form of the word was, indeed "football" (or "foteballe"), the word "soccer" also has British origins!
For obvious reasons, in the 1880s and 1890s, English newspapers couldn't use the first three letters of Association as an abbreviation in their pages, so they took the next syllable, S-O-C. With the British penchant for adding "-er" at the end of words: punter, footballer, copper, and, of course, nicknaming rugby, "rugger," the word "soccer" was soon born, over a hundred years ago, here in England, the home of soccer. We adopted it and kept using it because we have our own indigenous sport that we call football. - Archived, originally from the US Embassy in London website.
The same source also points out that the term "Association Football" was needed in order to distinguish "soccer" from "Rugby Football" (which has about as much to do with the foot as "American Football" for those who like to make that complaint!)
So, there you have it. No matter whether you choose to called it "soccer," "football" or anything else, it's still the same sport.
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