Same in Australia. Although we do have our own foot-the-ball game that may have been adapted from an indigenous game, no one fuckin’ knows
Comment on Now that’s kinda of a bitch move
combatwombat@feddit.online@feddit.online 1 day agoWe call it soccer in the PNW because that’s what the lumber workers who brought the game here called it when they immigrated. I’m not sure they were particularly posh.
Taleya@aussie.zone 1 day ago
TheOctonaut@piefed.zip 17 hours ago
I’m not claiming that every individual calling it soccer was posh or indeed tried to sound posh. But that’s how it stuck in America, where there was no working class attachment to “football” to contend with, and why it sounds weird to European ears. It’s also a useful distinguishing word from… soccer because other football exists. Gaelic football where I’m from, Aussie Rules, and for reasons best unexplored, that game where Americans only allow one specific guy to kick the ball
combatwombat@feddit.online@feddit.online 9 hours ago
Its quite the opposite in the US, in fact. If I say “I went to the football match last night to watch the Sounders, and they were poor. Pedro finally saw the pitch and stayed tight to the touchline until he came off with a knock,” it sounds like I’m trying to be posh. A working class person would say “I went to the soccer game last night to watch the Sounders, and they are bad. Pedro finally saw the field and stayed close to the sideline until he came off injured.” Soccer’s history in the US is immigrant and working class – the Philadelphia Ukrainians who organized around their immigrant identity, or Bethlehem Steel who organized around their union – and when Americans attempt to affect Britishness, it does not sound working class at all, it sounds like pretense.