The media coverage on MJ’s life & death is making me sick! The same media who used to crucify him is now trying to make him look like a God. I’ve never had any special feelings towards him. Although I recognize his talent and his work done during the 80′s, it wasn’t enough to change my opinion about him – a despicable creature who was ashamed of his own color but wasn’t ashamed of molesting innocent kids…RIP MJ, if you can ! 
Michael Jackson
FOOTBALL OR SOCCER?
Football or Soccer?
I am a sports fan and love most of sports, especially basketball, soccer, football, hockey, karate and biking. I think the world of sports is fascinating and intriguing. It brings joy and excitement to spectators and players, it entertains, it brings countries and people together. It makes the sedentary more active, the sick becomes healthier and the poor becomes rich and famous. The world of sports is very generous and has room for everyone, including those who are not very skilled and end up as sports commentators.
Another interesting thing about sports is the polemic they can cause. Whether at home, at work or on the beach we are always discussing or talking about it. Arguments are inevitable especially when supporters from different teams get together.
I have American and English friends who get along with each other very well except when the subject discussed is football. After listening to their arguments several times I came to the conclusion that they will never agree on this subject. That’s why I have decided to write a few lines about it.
Please note that I don’t want to take anyone’s side, I just want to expose their own arguments and points of view and let you have your own conclusions.
Instead of going straight to the football subject, let’s break the ice with some undeniable truths. The history shows that the English are really good at inventing sports but rarely achieve great results in the sports they have invented. Americans are famous for copying some sports and making them more attractive, commercial and profitable.
If I am not wrong, the British have invented the cricket, a very boring sport which was copied and made more attractive and lucrative by the Americans who have renamed it baseball.
Rugby which is not boring at all, was also invented by the British and then copied by the Americans. With a new approach and even more attractive rules, rugby was renamed football and became one of the United States’ favorite sports.
I think both rugby and American football are very attractive sports and have millions of fans worldwide, but the level of success that the American football has achieved is much greater than rugby’s. In other hand, American football wouldn’t exist without rugby and English football. In order to create the American football, Americans not only copied the rugby format but also the name of England’s national sport, football – the most popular sport in the world.
I don’t want to start a copyright discussion here, but with all copyright laws and regulations available today, it would be almost impossible for Americans do what they did in the past. That’s why I can perfectly understand how the English feel about it.
There’s nothing wrong about transforming something good in something even better, but I think the Americans should have been more cautious and diplomatic during this “transformation” process.
Usually when people decide to copy something it is because they lack creativity, or they want to take some kind of advantage on doing it. In this particular case, you may think that Americans lacked creativity for copying a sport instead of creating a completely new one. Or maybe there was a little bit of stupidity in calling “football” a sport which is mostly played with hands, especially because there already was another famous sport with the same name that entirely relies on the use of foot.
It doesn’t make any sense at all, does it? Perhaps, if you look at it from a different angle, things will start to make more sense and you’ll be able to realize that it wasn’t a lack of creativity or a stupidity case. It was pure opportunism.
Americans visualized the potential of rugby, reshaped it and made it more attractive. Simply naming it as American rugby would sound pretty much like a copy, wouldn’t it?
So, the next step was to find a good name for this “new” game, something catchy, very appealing that could easily become popular.
English football has never been popular in the States, but it was and still is the most popular sport on earth and it is watched and played by millions and millions of people around the world everyday.
So, how did Americans choose the name for their new game?
Let’s use our imagination a little bit… I can almost hear them saying:
- Why don’t we use the fame and huge popularity of English football to promote our new game? What about naming it football as well?
- Wouldn’t the American people get confused?
- Nah, the shapes of the balls are different and our guys will be wearing helmets. Besides, we also can change the name of English football to something else. How about soccer?
- Soccer? What a hell is that?
- I don’t know, but it sounds different and people won’t get confused.
Well, if you live in North America, I guess you know the rest of the story. Football is an exciting game, invented by Americans and it is played with an oval ball; and soccer is a boring game, invented by the British and it is played with a round ball.
Nowadays, football is one of the most popular sports in the U.S. and its success generates zillions of dollars every year. The Super Bowl’s advertising space is the most expensive in the world.
If you live in one of the other six continents, probably you’ve never heard about Super Bowl, but certainly know that football is played with a round ball by millions of people around the globe. It still is the most popular game on earth and the World Cup’s TV audience beats by far the Olympics and all North American sports together.
As a Canadian you might be asking yourself, what about our football history?
Well, our football history is a little easier to understand. We just copied from the Americans what they have copied from the British. Then we made the field a little bigger and called it Canadian Football. Easy to understand, but not very creative, eh?
Guto
*Note: The scraps posted on this blog express my opinion only and are not meant to be offensive to anyone. These scraps are not proofread and occasionally grammar errors and typos might occur. Thank you for your patience and tolerance.
WELCOME TO MY BLOG !
I thought I would never have a blog…
Maybe I am too old for this shit… Anyways, if I want to express myself and be heard I guess this is the way….
So from now on, I’ll try to keep posting scraps and pictures that could be interesting or not, depending on your point of view.
Please visit my blog often and let me know what you think.
TTYL
Guto
