The study DragonAsh alludes to (where soccer has the most upsets), apparently changes if you use only data from the past couple decades, whereupon baseball becomes the game with the most upsets. (A great pitcher on a great day can really mess up your ambitions, even if his team is weaker on the whole.) So perhaps soccer has become more predictable in recent years, albeit not as predictable as American football.
It is one of the things I love about soccer, that a weaker side with good tactics and gutsy play can sometimes have a real chance to hold off the obviously more stacked-with-talented side.
Um…yeah. I mean, that a weaker team is able to play a stronger team to a draw far more often in soccer vs other sports; isn’t that kinda proving the point?
Re: Baseball - the Seattle Mariners have had one of the best pitchers in baseball the last few years.
2013: 20 games under .500
2012: 12 games under .500
2011: 28 games under .500
2010: 41 games under .500
Well he’s quite clearly NOT saying that the usage is bad, rather just that it’s foreign, and that that makes the sport less approachable to native neophytes. I don’t know whether or to what extent that’s true, but I hardly think it’s implausible.
And “New York FC” is a stupid name, FWIW.
Eh, to each his own. I happen to like his schtick, and he’s pretty much the only person in sports who occasionally makes me laugh.
I’m not going to say it’s stupid, because “FC” has a long and noble tradition in soccer, even in America, even in countries that don’t speak English (e.g. FC Barcelona). But the next MLS expansion team should be by all rights the New York Cosmos, promoting that team forward to the MLS just as was done with the Sounders, Timbers, and Whitecaps. Among others.
I liked him little to not at all when his gig was politically commentary, which in all fairness may color my current view. (Again, speaking as someone who can’t remember when he last voted for a Republican.)
A great pitcher without a great team isn’t going to carry that team through the long MLB season. But he sure can make a hell of difference in a playoff series!
Point of Order, no team name will ever be more stupid than Real Salt Lake. Unless Utah suddenly acquires a Hispanophone autocratic ruler with an interest in soccer clubs.
So in 2010, when the Mariners were far and away the weakest team in the AL, they still went 61-101 for a .377 winning percentage, winning more than 1/3 of their games against uniformly stronger competition. That looks like pretty strong support for Knorf’s point.
I’ll grant you Real Salt Lake is very stupid. But is it worse than the LA Lakers or Utah Jazz?
Anyway, the use of F.C. isn’t in the same category at all, and was used by American teams as long ago as the first half of the 1900s, for example:Paterson F.C.*, Pawtucket F.C., Falco F.C., Fall River F.C., Bethlehem Steel F.C., Philadelphia F.C., and there was even an original New York F.C. in the original American Professional Soccer League of the 1920s and 1930s!
So, using “F.C.” for American soccer is not something new that the MLS came up with; it’s tied deeply to the history of soccer in America. And yes, even in the USA, the game was called “association football” in its earliest years. The usage of soccer became popular to distinguish the game from gridiron football, reasonably enough, as the usage of rugby became popular in other countries to be distinguished from association football.
To be fair, some of those old American "F.C."s stood for “field club,” (although not all!) but football as a name for soccer was used also in the time period. And modern F.C.s (such as the Seattle Sounders F.C.) never spell it out. Just “F.C.” The tradition is an old one.
In other word, Olbermann’s ranting about “F.C.” is just one more example of his pontificating about something he doesn’t know anything about.
I’ve probably said enough about this topic, but as long as Olbermann wants to rant about Britishisms supposedly alienating people from soccer (such a ridiculous idea! Did Downton Abbey alienate people from PBS?), it’s worth restating for the record that the word “soccer” itself originated as British slang!
Olbermann is a dipshit on this argument. How do you think it would go over if a Dallas Cowboy fan had to listen to a Brit go on about the “14 to nil match” against the Redskins he watched?
I think that’s a great name for a team to be honest, as long as the Real bit is pronounced as in Real Madrid - I’ve never heard it spoken aloud. There’s tons of clubs with long and storied names and rituals that maybe seemed daft at one point, but hey, they stick. Juventus play in black and white stripes because someone blagged a batch of Notts County strips in 1903 etc.
Real Salt Lake is indeed pronounced “rey-al” as you would expect. And its fan base is seriously into their team, which actually has a formal relationship now with Real Madrid. Whatever criticisms existed about the name have dissipated, just as they did with the Utah Jazz.
I dunno. More than one excited watcher has asked me why the Hell do people call the field “the pitch”. I’ve explained it’s a term from England and almost always had the response be “well, that’s stupid”. It’s not the deciding factor to not be a soccer fan, but its an obstacle, regardless of how small.
It’s not really soccer jargon in the sense that these are the words that fans everywhere use - touchline may apply in that sense and no one has ever asked me about that. It’s taking English slang and making it into American soccer jargon (a la, calling an elevator a ‘lift’ or a restroom ‘the loo’. English slang isn’t universal soccer jargon.
And as the point as been made, naming teams are European squads tends to strike folks as a bit silly. Yes, F.C. may have been used 100 years ago… but if you think they are harkening back to the 1920s when they name a squad F.C. Dallas or NYCFC, then you are just being ridiculous - they are obviously trying to signal European soccer squads (albeit, I’m ok with Sporting K.C. simply because the Kansas City Wiz was just an utterly horrible name one wonders how that passed any focus testing).
All this is, of course, where the term Eurosnob, as it applies to North American soccer fans (from almost as long as the MLS has been in existence) arises from ;). Though I doubt Olbermann knows of the term.
Mind, I’m not saying that everyone that uses those terms can be considered a “Eurosnob” - however, that arises from somewhere - and I think insistence in that being the proper way to refer to these things in soccer is part of it. Though, once again, not everyone does that, but there are more than a few who definitely do.
Not really, no. Ties essentially don’t exist in the other sports.
My point is that “the favorite doesn’t win” is a weasel word (erm, weasel phrase?) that misrepresents the situation when talking about a sport where a significant percentage of contests don’t have any winner at all.
Consider this equally valid phrasing: The ‘better team’ doesn’t lose more often often soccer than any other major sport.
This paints it in the polar opposite light, but again, it’s misrepresenting the reality because soccer has three likely outcomes while the other sports in the comparison only have two.
Ludicrous. Your anecdotes are of no statistical importance. You know what is? The increasing fan base for the MLS, larger TV audiences for professional matches of all kinds including European clubs, and more and more people watching and traveling to the World Cup. And no, we’re not talking just about an increasing Latino population, either (the usual attempt at a hand wave by critics.) Corresponding with this are more people using correct, traditional football terms. The use of jargon isn’t stopping anyone.
After all, other sports have equal or more opaque jargon. Should tennis drop the use of the word “love”? “Deuce”? Should golf drop “par” and “bogey”? Guess where those slang terms came from. Just guess.
Did you guess?
That’s right. Not the USA.
(Although in golf, the terms “birdie” and “eagle” are American in origin.)
No, it isn’t. These are the traditional terms for soccer rules, matches, and sides, even in the history of professional and club soccer in the USA. No one is butthurt (except for perhaps you and Olbermann) that soccer has some slightly different words for things than, for example, American football.
No, it isn’t.
But not one said so, either. All the terms for soccer come from British English, because the modern game was codified in England.
And you’re flat out wrong (incidentally, many of those FC teams lasted long than the 1920s!) Tradition is important for soccer in America, which has some history in the early development of professional soccer. And the old, traditional American use of “F.C.”—not just that of the European tradition—absolutely was part of the discussion for many of the current F.C.s (especially Seattle and the new New York FC, I know for sure).
When the MLS was conceived, the point was to be true to soccer’s traditions (unlike some previous attempts), in America and the world, and embrace what about it was different than most current American popular sports. And this was good thinking. Instead of watering it down in some stupid way, let it be what it is and has been, in American and through the world. Clocks time upwards. Stoppage time happens. Terms like “touchline” and “kit” and “match” and “pitch” are used. The teams use names from tradition in England as well as American, “F.C.” “Union.” This is a good thing, and respects the tradition of the game in the USA and globally, but helps establish a new tradition.
The one concession was playing in the summer, rather than fall through the winter, but for the USA that makes sense.
Neither you nor Olbermann have a leg to stand on about this point regarding “F.C.”, at all. When you made your point, you didn’t know anything about the history of professional soccer (or the use of “F.C.” in the USA) or anything about the conversations which occurred behind the naming of MLS teams.
No one I’ve heard or seen is insisting anything, except Olbermann said American fans should stop using those terms. And you.
I’ve yet to meet anyone who sneers at people who don’t use traditional jargon, but there sure is a lot of sneering at people who do. So who’s the snob? Olbermann is the snob.
That last sentence is Olberman’s point. Maybe if you drop the jargon, those people who are doing the sneering might not be immediately turned off to the game.
So apparently Olbermann’s criticism of people using European slang means that he is saying soccer is not growing in the US at all? This is what I mean by you are being overly defensive. He isn’t saying that soccer isn’t growing. He’s probably seen more soccer matches live than both of us combined. He’s saying that it would help US soccer (as he said it would make soccer work ‘better’). Oh, and not soccer fan bows to the supposed “correct term” which is simply English slang.
FWIW, there have plenty of calls to change the names of the terms in tennis by sportswriters. As far as I can remember, tennis fans just shrug and admit the scoring is silly and the writer has a point (but don’t change anything necessarily).
Also, with F.C. I can’t believe you are seriously sitting there saying it was intended to be “true to soccer’s traditions” when NOT A SINGLE ORIGINAL MLS SQUAD HAD “F.C.” IN THEIR NAME. So you are just being disingenuous here. D.C. United was the only original squad that had a European call back.
These are the names of the original MLS teams: Columbus Crew, D.C. United, New England Revolution, NY/NJ MetroStars, Tampa Bay Mutiny, Colorado Rapids, Dallas Burn, Kansas City Wiz, Los Angeles Galaxy, and San Jose Clash.
The F.C.'s and Union’s came later as the MLS tried to appeal to European looking fans.