May 25, 2002

Would it be possible to change the soccer category to something like association football? You wouldn't believe how much the word soccer grates to Brits.

posted by Fat Buddha to feature requests at 09:48 AM - 14 comments

This is actually a great question. Because should we change Footbal to American Football? How Ameri-centric do we want to be? I prefer football to soccer and American Football to plain Football. I'm American [but have been an ex-pat in France] and just used to those phrases.

posted by plemeljr at 06:45 PM on May 25, 2002

Do we really have to start this, it's a name, I'm sorry it grates on you, but it is a name, get over it. You could call football fat guys making room for skinny guys to run, and I wouldn't care, and I played college fat guys making room for skinny guys to run.

posted by jbou at 12:21 AM on May 26, 2002

Here's a previous discussion on the same topic. Since the audience and subject matter are predominantly American at present, using the U.S. meaning of "soccer" and "football" seemed like the best choice. I know no one calls it "soccer" elsewhere, but no one in the U.S. uses "American football." If we're going to piss someone off, I would prefer it to be the smaller group. Maybe we should add a preference to each user's account that uses Soccer/Football unless the user checks a box to make it Football/American Football.

posted by rcade at 09:01 AM on May 26, 2002

why not just overload the category name "football" ? If you don't like calling it Soccer, don't. just post your Manchester United news under "football" and see who screams.

posted by djacobs at 11:06 AM on May 27, 2002

djacobs: I admire the attempt you just made:

The World Cup of 1958 never happened!
Swedish TV will air a documentary on Wednesday about a group called "Konspiration 58" [only swedish], claiming that the football (or soccer for ye usians) World Cup of 1958 (held in Sweden) never took place; it was supposedly staged in the US on closed arenas. It all was a cold war publicity stunt by the western powers to spread the new medium television world wide. A thing that little Sweden did not have the technical competence to pull through. The idea and the pictures are wonderful, and soccer is more important than the moon landing. Link lifted straight from kuro5hin. (that category is _Football_ by the way, not American Football)
posted by djacobs to Football at 10:55 AM CST - 1 comments (1 new)
But if you were so opposed to the word soccer that you misfiled the link under football, why did you use the word soccer in your link? :-)

posted by rcade at 12:31 PM on May 28, 2002

In this part, I mean: "soccer is more important than the moon landing."

posted by rcade at 12:39 PM on May 28, 2002

I think Canadians call it soccer too, but that's Canadians for you.. I have a funny feeling that there will be an increase in the links in this subject for the next, oo, month or so. For some odd reason. Hence we should compromise and switch to "Footie" for the next month - nobody calls American Football Footie in the US do they? That will please the brits while still keeping things clear for that all important NFL news. Problem solved, huzzah!

posted by Mossy at 05:57 PM on May 28, 2002

rcade: you caught me! haha! I feel like a total sucker. Anyway, I also posted it because it's the kind of sports story - goofy but still interesting - that often flies under the spofi radar. Sometimes I look at sportsfilter and see nothing more than the ESPN best of, and that's not a good feeling.

posted by djacobs at 07:05 PM on May 28, 2002

"Footie." I like that. It feels warm and fuzzy.

posted by jacknose at 07:31 PM on May 28, 2002

Would that make American football "runnie" or "throwie"?

posted by trox at 07:53 AM on May 29, 2002

I'm trying to learn enough ColdFusion to implement my idea of customizeable category names (Soccer/Football will be used unless you check a box on the customize page to make it Football/American Football). I liked the link, though it's a shame they haven't translated their theories into English yet.

posted by rcade at 10:47 AM on May 29, 2002

I thought it was called "footer" in UK. Or at least that's what I learnt from the "Roy of the Rovers" comics. (Brits know what I'm talking about.)

posted by worldcup2002 at 03:26 PM on May 31, 2002

"Footie" is Australian Rules Football, no?

posted by aine42 at 05:44 PM on May 31, 2002

trox: maybe it should be "touchy." heh.

posted by worldcup2002 at 03:08 PM on June 01, 2002

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