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Comment by mikegriff | Hacker News Reader

Reading this article (and lots more around world cup time) written about football by North Americans, I've noticed that there's a different way of thing about teams and countries than in Europe (or the English speaking part at least).

The biggest one that jumps out at me is using single person to describe the teams. We generally describe a team as 'they' rather than 'it'. So we are more likely to see 'Germany’s win will also affect their odds in the World Cup final' than the way it's written in the article.

Has anyone else found any other Americanisms?

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> Has anyone else found any other Americanisms?

Offense (US) is Attack (elsewhere).

home-field advantage (US) is home advantage (elsewhere)

"Some of the goals that Brazil keeper Julio Cesar allowed were unavoidable, but he was not exactly Tim Howard in net. " (US)

would be [approx]

"Some of the goals that Brazil keeper Julio Cesar conceded were unavoidable, but he was not exactly Tim Howard in goal." (elsewhere)

Away from the article, the most jarring thing for a football (US: soccer) fan exposed to the US media is the use of "tie" instead of "draw". Of course there is also the US concept of an "assist" which has in fact now been embraced by the wider football community.

As well as differences in specific terminology, there is a broader and difficult to pin down difference in the "feel" of US coverage of football. To someone used to traditional football coverage it feels alien, maybe basketball or baseball translated into football rather than native football.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy American sport and love the rapid fire humour and passion of American sport journalism in all media.

> "Some of the goals that Brazil keeper Julio Cesar conceded were unavoidable, but he was not exactly Tim Howard in goal." (elsewhere)

There's another plural/singular one. It would more likely be 'in goals', or more colloquially, 'in sticks'.

> the use of "tie" instead of "draw"

That reminds me of another one, how the score is communicated. Americans say something like 'Germany won seven to one', I'd say 'Germany won seven one'. This then gets quite confusing for Gaelic football where we say things like 'Mayo won three twelve to one seven' (3 goals and 12 points to 1 goal and seven points)

In goals ? I don't think so. Perhaps you are confusing local colloquialisms with standard British English ?

That seems to be the more used phrase. Maybe it's an Irish thing, we like to be a bit different too :)

I'm guessing you're from the UK? This isn't specific to teams. Any group is referred to in the plural in the UK and the singular in the US. For example, "the police is" vs "the police are".

Right, and as an American when I read British English it's not the use of "their" vs "its" that strikes me as 'foreign', it's the fact that as you point out, the names of groups take plural verbs in British and singular verbs in American usage.

Almost, I'm from Ireland.

I hadn't noticed the wider use of singular groups previously, but that does make sense when you point it out. I suppose it was just more obvious because we rarely see american analysis of football outside of the world cup.

I'm from the midwest (USA) and I'm not sure what the rule is but here is how I would say it.

The City Council is … The class is … The police are … The firefighters are …

The phrase "the police is" sounds so foreign to me, that I am almost certain I've never heard nor said it.

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