I have no problem with things that the fans come up with; that was the whole point of my post. And El Trafico is pretty clever.
I dislike the official things, like “Atlanta United play here!” That doesn’t come from the fans.
That is a constant among media partners. And I have definitely heard “The Braves play here” and United implies a plural term (FWIW for all the European naming of Atlanta United, there have been a number of things the fans have come up by themselves - including the “We Ready” chant before games based on an Atlanta based rap song - and fans have embraced plenty of the team created traditions like the Golden Spike. Generally the fans and front office have worked together to create arguably the best fan base in MLS - along with Portland, Seattle, and SKC, though Atlanta United is the one that has all the MLS attendance records).
Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
The best part is that the experience starts on the way to the match.
Please, do away with the uniforms that are nothing but advertisements. I have no idea who is playing whom, when I’m watching the “BMOs” playing the “AT&Ts.” Internationally? I’m watching “Fly Emirates” vs. “Adidas,” or somesuch. I have no idea who is playing whom. The players’ jerseys prominently display a sponsor, but fail to identify the team. A small patch on the player’s upper left, that cannot be seen on TV, doesn’t count.
Yes. I hate sponsor ads on uniforms.
It’s even odder when the ads aren’t even local to the team. Manchester United has Chevrolet on their tops but Chevrolet doesn’t sell cars in the UK.
Anfield Stadium in Liverpool has ads for Dunkin Donuts and there are no Dunkin Donuts in Liverpool
You have heard “the Braves play here” because Braves is plural. We say “Atlanta plays here” because Atlanta is singular. That’s how American grammar works.
Any singular thing can conceivably contain multitudes but that doesn’t matter for grammatical purposes. If you use a singular noun, it goes with a singular verb.
Yeah, but baseball actually started out that way; the teams (especially several of the old original National League teams) were clubs that played baseball. MLS teams, not so much (single-entity, anyone?).
Uh, sorry, but while I’m no fan of sponsors on kits, international soccer teams have NEVER splashed their club name all over the uniform. You’re supposed to KNOW what team plays in vertical blue and black stripes in Italy, or which team in England plays with red tops and black shorts, which with red tops and red shorts, and which with red tops and white shorts. Of course, in this day of ever-changing away strips and the even worse “third” uniform, it’s not so easy to tell who the visitors are any more at a glance. :mad:
I saw City playing against 'Pool the other day in their ICC game; City were sporting a truly garish dark blue strip that included bright yellow socks. I didn’t get the point; if you can’t wear your sky blue, you probably won’t be allowed to wear a medium-dark blue, either! :dubious:
But it is United, not just Atlanta. You hear the Utah Jazz as a plural (The Jazz are good, play here, etc). Same concept.
The vast majority have not. The New York Mets are a ‘baseball club’ even though they started as a franchise for MLB in 1962. Hell, just about the entire American league was created by the league itself (including the Yankees and Red Sox). At best, 7 baseball franchises can be called ‘clubs that played baseball’ (the Philadelphia Quakers who later became the Phillies were a National League created expansion team).
In the US clubs and franchises are considered functionally the same thing - even those ‘club’ baseball teams are subject to the same complete MLB control (through the owners/Board of Directors and the Commissioner) as later expansion teams have been. So who cares if they were started independently?
Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
Liverpool wore some horrible purple kit during one of their matches. I got seasick just watching that. I have plenty of Liverpool tops, but I’d never want one in purple.
That’s because the Jazz are an aberration. Sports teams are supposed to have plural names. Having a singular name for a team just screws everything up and people aren’t sure what pronoun to use.
Same with Orlando Magic and Oklahoma Thunder. American sports fans aren’t used to names like that.
NFL and MLB don’t have team names like that.
Standard American grammar calls for “the Braves are,” “Atlanta is,” “the Atlanta United is.”
“Jazz” creates some confusion because the nickname is customarily plural and the word “Jazz” kind of sounds plural, but most style guides indicate “Utah is,” “the Jazz is.”
The history of the American League is somewhat murky because the teams did exist in some form before the the league became official. It’s somewhat arbitrary to decide whether they were created by the league or incorporated from previously existing business entities.
But it’s nitpicking because “club,” “team,” and “franchise” have all been basically used interchangeably.
Can’t put the genie back in the box. NBA has cracked that door wide open. Don’t forget the Miami Heat as well. In addition to NHL teams like the Avalanche, Wild, and Lightening.
From NBA.com:
https://www.nba.com/jazz/newlook
“The Utah Jazz are proud to present a refreshed brand identity for the 2016-17 season”
I think if the NBA says ‘Jazz are’, that should be good enough to say it can be used.
Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk
I don’t takes cues on English usage from the commercial entity at issue. It’s not American usage.
Lordy, all the kerfluffle over use of singular or plural forms of verbs. Geeze, it’s not that big a deal.
The Chicago Cubs are a great baseball team. The Cubs are in first place. Chicago is leading the Central.
So we in America would say, usually, because we view the “Cubs” as being the group of players (hence the plural noun; each player is “a Cub”). But when using Chicago to describe them, the purpose is to refer to the organization as a whole: “[The] Chicago [Baseball Team] is …”
In England, by contrast, when referring to, for example, Liverpool Football Club, the use of “Liverpool” to name the organization is still referring to the collection of players. “[The]Liverpool [Football Club players] are …” They simply see the situation differently, a difference that is not limited to sporting teams.
For us, this different way of seeing a team causes trouble when you come across a team like the New Orleans Jazz (let’s be old school today :D). “New Orleans is …” is no problem. But “The Jazz are …” might cause us difficulty because we aren’t used to looking at singular nouns as being plural collections when talking about teams. But “The Jazz” means not a singular thing (one jazz), but rather the collection of players (the [players who make up the] Jazz). So most people just treat the construction in a manner parallel with teams like the Cubs.
If you want a weird example, take the Stanford Cardinal.
But English (American or British) tends to change with time. I routinely use the “English” construction when talking about soccer, and find that it tends to leak over to talks about other sports. I’ve heard that from others, too. So I’d predict that, in another 50 years or so, Americans will not sound much different talking about their sports teams than their English counterparts.
Yeah that team name is just awful. Every time I hear it or see it in print I want to correct it. So ironic that it’s the team from Stanford of all places.
The shame to me is that the team used to be “Cardinals”, referencing the bird, until 1981 when they decided their mascot was a color. :rolleyes:
This is a long thread so I apologize to anyone who might have pointed this out, but since the early 2000s European soccer is EXTREMELY popular with Millennials and Gen Y-ers who grew up watching Premier League on TV and/or playing the FIFA/Evolution soccer video games and they identify “FC”, “Real” “City” and other Euro-isms with the biggest clubs in the world so it makes a lot of sense for MLS teams to mimic this usccess. Usually, these teams get their own secondary nicknames such as the Manchester City Blues, Man U Red Devils, Chelsea Pensioners, etc etc. so theres no real need for most MLS teams to take on “Americanized” names with the exception of clubs that did well in NASL such as San Jose, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver.
As for the “fake” fans in Minnesota or Atlanta perhaps the greatest tradition of soccer is fan clubs. I remember Philadelphia was awarded a club partly based on the efforts of the Sons of Ben fan club; they were awarded the Riverside end of Talen Energy Stadium and lead the fans in chants and also meet with the team to review any fan-team issues. Hardly a “fake” or contrived way to get the fans into the game. I hang out with the East End Army and I-Beam Ultras, who support the Unions farm club, Bethlehem Steel FC and its the same thing—we try to lead the fans into chants to support the team, and a few times some of the players not suited up will actually sit with us or the on-field players will come over and shake our hands and thank us for our support and even take selfies with us after the game. Its a unique fan experience you will not see in the other sports, and definitely not fake or contrived.
This is simply a matter of dialect, not seeing things differently. The use of plural terms to describe a group is common in all contexts in British English, not just regarding soccer teams. If a crowd is laughing at a comedian in London, you would say “the audience are laughing” but in San Jose, you’d say “the audience is laughing.”
That said, I have to add that the soccer/football distinction is a hell of a lot more recent than people think, and 50 years ago it was quite common in England for soccer to be called, well, soccer.
It was actually always referencing the color.
They just decided to drop the ‘s’ to make that more apparent.