AC Milan started the same way (sport, not day)
Now how, I ask you, can we have a proper hijack about silly sports team names without broaching the subject of Minor League Baseball? We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the likes of the Albuquerque Isotopes, Richmond Flying Squirrels, Montgomery Biscuits, Modesto Nuts, and Grand Prairie AirHogs, among others. Plus, may we please take a moment and bow our heads in respect to the sadly defunct Macon Whoopee, which I’m sure we’ll all agree is history’s best use of double entendre in a sports team name?
– Kingspades, proud Stormy Petrel, Class of 1997
I give you the Seattle Sounders FC Alliance. So, it is a club you can join and members have certain voting rights over the direction of the team and general manager. It is based on the Spanish league’s concept of a “club”.
Missed the edit window, but as far as team names go, the Seattle Sounders name is a reference to the Puget Sound. The Sounders have always been the highest-level soccer team in Seattle since the 70’s. When the MLS expansion came to Seattle, the team owners put out a call to vote on the new team’s name. They had three choices listed, all of which had European-club overtones to them (though none as gag-inspiring as Real Salt Lake). But the majority of fans wrote in some form of the existing Sounders name, so that is how the new MLS team adopted the Sounders name. The previously existing USL Seattle Sounders were disolved when the new MLS team formed (alot of the same management and players came over).
As far as voting rights go, even the second division Austin Aztex have an Aztex Alliance. Of course, the Aztex don’t have the same level of support as the Sounders, so it will probably be a while before it gets to the 1500 member level to get a Board member, but it’s there. Not coincidentally, the Aztex owner is a Brit and part owner of Stoke City, so the idea is something he’s brought over from England.
Here’s a football team name that I coincidentally learned about yesterday. It is called “Third Lanark” and I have previously wondered why, along the lines of “what about first and second Lanark? And surely three football teams would be too many for a not-very-big town?” But now I know that it was originally the football team of Third Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers.
I suppose now I could go on to wonder about the team called “Queen of the South”, but, nah, that would be too much football for one day.
That is true, but even Arsenal fans call them that. I just think that the “arse” joke is so obvious that people don’t even see it any more. They even have a manager whose name starts with the letters “Arse”, and people still don’t make jokes about it. The comic potential of the name faded long ago, I think.
But never mind. There’s always Scunthorpe United. (Look closely at that name if you don’t see what I’m getting at).
Ah, yes. 
On a message board and chatroom I used to use, a friend who lived in Scunthorpe could never really say where she lived, because the board had some irritating automatic censorship that wouldn’t let anyone mention Scunthorpe or “snigger” (took me a while to work that one out) or to mention one’s pet pussycat. It being a U.S. setup, I think it didn’t like “ass” but was perfectly happy with “arse”.
I can not leave this discussion on soccer team names without mentioning a curious one from the old country:
The C.D. Luis Angel Firpo
How in heck would that work?
You get to name your soccer team after a boxer? (A very famous one in the Americas, I grant you that)
That is not from El Salvador?
Well…
It took a while, but in the end it worked really well.
What about this team name for tongue in cheek wit.
Abergavenny Thursdays
Probablt named because they played their matches on Thursdays. That’s how Sheffield Wednesday got their name.
How did Real Zombie get their name? 
I quite like the German Football team of Kickers Offenbach
I’ve always thought Arsenal was such a great name for a sports team. It’s short and snappy, it’s classy in that it’s named after its geographical roots rather than being invented by a marketing person, and it suggests explosive firepower! And it means the club gets to use a weapon on its badge.
Yep. You just gotta cheer for the Gunners!
(Arsenal fan here. The arse joke is just too obvious, but we use it ourselves from time to time, if the team is performing poorly. Such as, “you can’t say Arsenal without saying Arse.” But we love our Gunners!)
FA Cup Final tomorrow. For the Arsenal!
Unlike in the US, geographical roots are rather more important than the franchise system that relocates clubs to the highest bidder. Arsenal are no better than MK Dons in that respect, having moved from Woolwich to Drayton Park. They also have the distinction of being the only club in the English top division never to having earned their place in it, achieving their top flight status by means of bribery between 1915-19.
Tottenham fan per chance?
Doris Stokes has got nothing on you…
There are plenty of those. One of my favorites is Santiago Morning in Chile. There are also: Santiago Wanderers, Audax Italiano, Palestino, and Unión Española (yes, their uniforms are much the same as La Furia Roja’s). The “Big Three” in Chile, though, are: Colo Colo (the name of a Mapuche chief), Universidad Católica, and Universidad de Chile. From Chile only Colo Colo has won the Copa Libertadores (23 years ago over Olimpia de Paraguay in the final. Colo Colo then lost the world club championship to Crvena Zvevda (Red Star) of (then-)Yugoslavia.
Kickers, eh? That’s pretty much how I viewed the German national team from the time I first saw it (the 1982 World Cup) until Löw took over - as little more than a bunch of Kickers (of opponents).
I always saw them as divers rather than kickers. Oh, and elbowers… remember the Poodle (Rijkaard conditioned) haired Voller blatantly elbowed Maradona in the face in the 1990 final and got away scot free? Well, having spoilt the World Cup by knocking out FIFA’s beloved Brazil, Argentina probably deserved it…
Still, the tournament still had its high points; the look on Andy Roxburgh’s face after Scotland had lost to Costa Rica was certainly one…