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Comment by heywhatupboys | Hacker News Reader

world football championship

Technically it is FIFA World Cup, a tournament that is sold to the highest bidder

Right, and it is country-oriented which is fairly arbitrary, not team-oriented as most football is played. It's possible the best football team in the world(probably the UEFA Champions League champs) could beat the winner of the FIFA World Cup(barring the fact that some of the same players may be on both teams), since the best football team can and does draw from many different countries.

I think it is generally understand that the best football clubs would far stronger than the best national teams. At the very least club team players play and train together the whole year, while national teams only have a few weeks every couple of years.

National teams play several times a year.

You missed the basic point: it is not about the UEFA: if you can build a team with the best (team) players in the world, it would beat other teams that are based on nationality or specific leagues like UEFA. If Qatar wants they can build a better team than the UEFA ones. Hint: look at Barça.

>If Qatar wants they can build a better team than the UEFA ones

They definitely could not

>Hint: look at Barça.

What do you mean

I think @wslh is saying the if you put the best players from multiple countries together (eg, if Qatar decided to spend unlimited money to build a club team that would be eligable for UEFA club competitions) that team would be the best.

>>Hint: look at Barça.

> What do you mean

This is a reference to the Barcelona teams built with basically unlimited budgets that have dominated the European Cup.

Of course, Qatar sort of does have a UEFA team called Manchester City via the state-run Qatar Airlines sponsorship. It has a basically unlimited budget and has dominated the English premier league for a while now (although it has struggled in European competition).

Don't forget Qatari owned Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) also. PSG is the club that Lionel Messi and his opposing number 10 from the World Cup Final, French star Kylian Mbappe, play for together in the French football league. Similar to Manchester City, they are often the best team in their country and frequently participate in the UEFA Champions League

Barça and PSG/City are very different beasts. Barcelona (like many clubs throughout Europe and South America) is member-owned. You can become a "sócio" (partner) and vote in elections for the club's director team.

PSG and City are glorified marketing vessels for human rights abusing autocracies. Very different.

Qatar owns the PSG. Also the UEFA implemented compensation caps and other measures to prevent the Qatari/Saudi/Emirati from buying out their clubs.

Another point: You can have the best team in the world, but it won't be the best team unless it plays against someone else (preferably many other teams). The game is interesting because the winner is uncertain. If the winner becomes certain at all times (or worse, all the rankings) then there is no reason to play the game anymore.

Soccer Tournament.

Mundial

It’s incredibly annoying how whenever someone calls the game “soccer”, a smug European person pipes up to say that it’s really called “football”.

(And yes, I’ve only ever seen Europeans doing this, not people from any of the other parts of the world where it’s also called football).

Is it really so hard for you to accept that there are different words for things in different countries, and that not all cultures are identical to your own?

True. It’s also called soccer in Australia and in Japan (transliterated as サッカー), too.

You can’t really expect people in all places to use the same words for things.

It's incredibly annoying to keep hearing this word, "soccer" is an insult, the game/sport is called "football".

I mean the british invented the word soccer to describe the sport. They also created the sport itself (in its modern iteration and rules).

The word "soccer" started in England as a slang of "association," which became "assocc" and then "soccer." Americans learned the word from the English.

It may also surprise you to learn that water closets are called restrooms in other countries that speak English.

This is similar to getting upset that in various countries an apple is called “pomme”, “manzana”, “apple”, etc. Shouldn’t we call it by the name it’s called in whichever country it was first cultivated?

In fact no, we shouldn’t, because different languages and dialects have different words for things, and that’s just a fact of life.

If you're speaking a different language, using a different word is fine. But if you presume to claim to be speaking "English", then you should use the word they use in England.

I claim to speak American English. I don’t recognize any dialect of English, including my own, as the primary one that all others have to follow, because English is a pluricentric language. I’ll never tell someone from England, Ireland, Australia, India, Zimbabwe etc. that their version of English is wrong, and they shouldn’t tell me that mine is either.

This phenomenon isn’t unique to English, by the way. Every language spoken in more than one country (AFAIK) has some words that vary between countries.

Your argument is a bit ridiculous IMO, it’s like saying neovim should merge every patch that gets merged to vim.

And yet you don't know that the term soccer comes from association football and was coined by the English

I'm aware, I just don't consider it relevant.

Not in the USA it isn’t, and this website is hosted in the USA and it seems likely that at least the largest plurality, if not majority, of readers live in the USA.

> and this website is hosted in the USA

of all the arguments in the world this is the worst one. A nationalist leftover reminding us that while the internet has potential for global unity, someone will forcibly drag it down to worldly borders

You’re the one chiding people for speaking their native language online because it differs from yours.

Nothing screams international unity quite like getting upset some people call a game soccer in their normal language.

That's not really how the internet works.

¡Coge tu fútbol!

Just means "grab your football" in Spain, but means something completely different in Argentina ;)

I don't think anyone would say that in Spain, as long as they are not having a stroke.

Very strong stroke.

Hah. My Spanish is riddled with errors, I admit, even though I lived in Spanish speaking countries for about 5 years. Coger is a word I just completely avoid at all costs. Terminar also. I learn mostly by public embarrassment, and patient explanation, so please tell me why it wouldn't be proper to say "pick up your football" that way?

You are right about the "coger" (to pick up / to fuck) part. But fútbol is just the sport. You'd talk about "coger la pelota / balón".

I'd assume is the same in Argentina, but I do not know that for certain.

In Argentina “terminar” is OK but “acabar” (almost same meaning) is the dangerous one.

We don’t call the ball itself fútbol in Argentina, only the game. The ball is la pelota.

It comes from the phrase association football. You're just ignorant it's a term that's from the same place where football was created

Football is kind of a logical name for one game and pretty illogical for another.

US should just adopt the metric system and start calling their sport handegg :)

Both games evolved from the collection of related pre-modern games that were all called “football”, as did rugby, Australian football, and some others.

In every English-speaking country, whichever of these related games is most popular is simply called “football”.

It’s unclear whether the name derives from kicking the ball with the foot (which happens to a greater or lesser extent in all such games), or from the fact that they’re played on foot (rather than e.g. on horseback).

On the etymology of "soccer":

  1889, socca, later socker (1891), soccer (1895), originally university slang (with jocular formation -er (3)), from a shortened form of Assoc., abbreviation of association in Football Association (as opposed to Rugby football); compare rugger. An unusual method of formation, but those who did it perhaps shied away from making a name out of the first three letters of Assoc. Compare 1890s English schoolboy slang leccer, from lecture (n.).

Source: https://www.etymonline.com/word/soccer

To your point, the first college football game in the US was, simultaneously, the first college soccer game because it took place before the split between soccer and rugby, and the rules were those drafted by the Football Association in England. The rugby rules were adopted by Canadian colleges, who went on to play against American colleges, who adopted the rugby rules and added the initial changes that created American football.

A gridiron football is still clearly a ball in function, even if not spherical, just like how a rugby ball is still called a ball.

The word "football" has been used to describe games played without kicking for centuries. A possible etymology is that it means not a game played with the feet, but a game played on foot. It could describe any of the games played by peasants, as opposed to the equestrian sports (racing, polo, dressage) played by aristocrats.

The game of handball is quite popular here in the Netherlands, differing from football in using hands instead of feet.

> A possible etymology is that it means not a game played with the feet, but a game played on foot.

As opposed to all those other popular ball games which are played sitting down?

≥ US should just adopt the metric system

I just erased a long rant about this, because no one needs to read another one.

But I'll summarize: Our refusal to adopt the metric system is really a symptom of everything that's wrong with the country today. I blame organized religion.

I think at one time, we probably went our own way because we were first or best.

But today it just seems hardheaded. And it's not just metric...you have ANSI vs ISO, electrical systems, 4g and 5g radio bands, etc. With a world population 20 times the US population, I foresee a lot more companies just deciding it doesn't make financial sense to bother with the US market. We already see that with smartphones.

> I blame organized religion

You have no idea how accurate and profound your statement is. The mid 1800s religious extremism still survives in the US and plagues its public discourse and institutions in the form of anti-intellectualism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-intellectualism#United_St...

The American anti-intellectualism is far stronger compared to all the forms of anti-intellectualism across the world, and its surprisingly wide-reaching - a lot of the anti-intellectual behaviors of the religious American crowd of 1850s survive today and manifest themselves in different forms. From opposing science to conservatism in silly things like the resistance to the metric system and more.

French intellectuals want us to divide by the number of fingers we have, because man is the measure of all things. They’re also in league with mathematicians and some foreign Arabian number system.

English engineers much prefer a 12-based system where you can design, construct and build easily— dividing measurements by 2, 3, and 4– where practicality is foremost.

I do think French atheism is at the root of it yes.

P.S. completely trolling/kidding!

P.P.S. Long before the metric system, the French were calling a dozen dozen “grosse”. The prejudice goes long back and it isn’t from us Angle-ophones!

> the French were calling a dozen dozen “grosse”. The prejudice goes long back and it isn’t from us Angle-ophones!

Hell yeah it is - the never-ending English, later British propaganda against France goes back 600 years. Against Spain, it goes back 500 years. A lot of that seems to have been carried over to its former colonies.

Those dang mathematicians with their factoring.

You can have the best of both worlds: when I'm fixing my daughter's curtain rail, I use mm to measure distance from the window frame because if I use fractions of an inch I'm far more likely to bugger up the maths. But if I want to tell someone my height, I will use feet and inches as those are more human-scale and convenient than metric. For packaging and products there seems no logical reason to not cite both, although the EU mandated metric-only

If football rules allow all body parts except hands then a logical name would be Nohandball.

Footheadchestknee ball doesn't quite roll off the tongue as well, so nohandball it is.

In Ireland we tend to call it soccer, as people use football to refer to Gaelic (Irish) football.

I'd imagine any country with a pre-existing sport called "football" would tend to call it soccer.

This needs proper data because a lot of people argue the opposite. The other is then just called gaelic or gaa.

Also, soccer was invented by the English, let the virus spread, then switched back to football.

It's contextual. Whichever you mainly play, you call it 'football'. One of the side effects of us having three kinds of football!

Soccer redirects to “Association football” on Wikipedia. I am American and I find “soccer” to be disingenuous to the sport, since “Football” referring to the ol’ hogskin takes priority but is primarily an American sport.

I've seen only opposite. I live in Europe and no European I've talked to cares about football or soccer (and they tend to say "soccer" when they speak to Americans)

But I've heard a lot of Americans say "no it's called soccer" when they heard the term football

To be fair, I rarely hear the Europeans I know in real life complaining about it either. It seems to be a purely online phenomenon.

Especially as many people in the UK call the game soccer. For these people the term football would be used to refer to (Rugby) football.

So the second "F" in "FIFA" stands for "Soccer"? ;)

No, it stands for "football", which is what soccer is called in French.

FIFA is "Fédération internationale de football association".

I never claimed that French people couldn’t call things whatever they like in their own language :)

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