Why Americans Call Soccer “Soccer” Essay - 2200 Words

Why Americans Call Soccer â€Å"Soccer† (Essay Sample) Content: First Last NameProfessorCourse TitleDateWhy Americans Call Soccer "Soccerà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ "Football" or "Soccerà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ , the sport has a huge number of fans all over the world. Football is a worldwide name and soccer is the American name that is used for football though its use has started spreading around the world. The problem started when the rest of the world blamed the US people for naming the sport in a different name; they called this act an "Americanismà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ . Americans responded to that accusation with strong evidence that they call it à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Soccer" because the name "soccer" was invented in England in the second half of the 19th century.A thesis statement determines an essayà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s subject matter and tells the reader something significant. ÂIt summarizes an essayà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s main point and tells why the essay is essential and worth reading. The thesis statement for this article is the reason why despite the fact that the w ord soccer was first used in Britain, and was used there until the 1980s, it has now become a more popular sport in the United States. As Szymanski explains, in the recent decades there has been a criticism against the use of the word soccer in Britain due to the infiltration of the game into the American culture.A hook is a thing that has been designed to grab people's attention and the heading of this article does just that. A person will naturally want to know the reason why Americans have a different name for what the rest of the world knows as football. The article gives a background of what led to the Americans calling Soccer "Soccer" and this dates back to as early as the Middle Ages, when as Szymanski explains, the rough outlines of soccerà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ a ball, a game, feetà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬might have been present in England(Szymanski,2014).The article goes on to explain how in 1863, leaders of a dozen clubs met at the Freemasonsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ Tavern in London to look for a name and rule s for the game that started becoming common between school boys. They wanted to come up with a "distinct code of rules to regulate the game" which they did by forming the Football Association (The Atlantic Monthly, 1993). The biggest issue was whether to allow "hacking," or kicking the leg of an opponent to which they answered à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"noà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬. In 1871, some other clubs met in London to code a version of the game that involved more use of hands; an option closely associated with the Rugby School. Then the à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"Book of Rules of Association Football, by a Group of Former English Public School Menà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ was published. Since then onwards there were two versions of Football: Rugby Football and Association Football. The second assumption is; if the word soccer originated in Great Britain, why was it neglected there and became dominant in the United States? The final assumption is that the informal word "Soccer" was used in the US in the first decade of the 20th century so as to distinguish the game from American football which was a hybrid of Association Football and Rugby Football. Also countries that tend to use word "soccer" nowadays, like Australia, have another sport called Football.The United States of America Foot Ball Association founded in 1913 is the current United States Soccer Federation. In 1945, it was renamed the United States Soccer Football Association. The word football was finally dropped from the organizationà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s name in 1974.The first evidence mentioned by the writer is when the sport economic Stefan Szymanski published a paper about debunking the notion that "soccer" is a semantically bizarre American invention. Szymanski wrote, ""The rugby football game was shortened to 'rugger,'" while "the association football game was, plausibly, shortened to 'soccer.à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ The second evidence is a letter Szymanski cites written in 1905 to the editor of The New York Times from Francis Tabor of New York, who warned of the spreading "heresy" of the word "socker": (It seems a thousand pities that in reporting Association football matches THE NEW YORK TIMES, in company with all the other newspapers, should persistently call the game "Socker"). In the first place, there isnà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬t such a word, and second, it is an exceedingly ugly and improper. One can search the English papers all the way through , and in all the columns of games descriptions, you will not find even "Soccer" (which is probably the word intended). As a matter of fact, it was a fad at Oxford and Cambridge to use "er" at the end of many words, such as foot er, sport er, and as the Association did not take an "er" easily, it was, and is, sometimes spoken of as Soccer.)The writerà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s information is credible because when the New Zealand's largest newspaper asked its readers a question on how to refer to the "global round-ball game" as "soccer" or as "football", by a wide margin the answer was "football. The writer often quot es a sports economist at the University of Michigan, Stefan Szymanski, who published a paper disapproving the impression that soccer is a semantically bizarre invention of the Americans. In the article, the writer describes the American soccer as a game that employs more use of the hands which is a variant most closely linked with Rugby. The ball is not the right shape and it is carried around by hand, is occasionally thrown for other people to catch. Only one person in each t...