Who wins this bet?

In My Humble Opinion
1

First of all, let me explain that this bet was only for one dollar, so its mostly about the pride and stubborness of the parties involved. But I wanted to get some relatively unbiases opinions on the subject.

Parties A, B, and C are engaged in a discussion about soccer when Party A and Party B decide to make a bet on whether Party C (who knows very little about sports, especially overseas soccer) can name a single Italian soccer club. Party A is betting he can name one, Party B is betting against it. Before asking Party C, the stipulation is made (and this is as close the exact wording as anyone remembers) that “he can’t name just the city.” So C says Roma, and both A and B think they have won. A thinks so on the grounds that he didn’t say “just the city name” he said the common name of the club. B says that he named “just the city name” and in order to win the bet he would have had to provide further information than just “Roma” since that is the name of the city. In this case the full name of the team would be AS Roma. I’m not sure what the AS stands for, but I assume its similar to the FC which stands for Football Club in many English teams names. Party B concedes that if C had said Lazio, another team in Rome, he wouldn’t have had to use these indentifying initials, as Lazio is the common name of the team, and not the name of the city.

As far as I know, the common names of soccer clubs are generally in one of three styles.

First, teams that are simply the city name. Ecamples include Roma and Bacelona. These teams have FC or some equivilant in the proper name, but everyone calls them the city name.

Second, teams that have the city name and another part, like Manchester United and Inter Milan. These clubs could not be readily identified with just the city name as there are other clubs that use that same city name, like Manchester City and AC Milan, in their common name.

The third type does not involve the city name, like Arsenal or Juventus. These are not really relevant to the bet.

So Party A’s argument hedges on the assumption that the extra condition on the bet was to prevent C from saying Milan and getting credit for either Inter Milan or AC Milan. Party B’s argument hedges on the assumption that to satisfy the condition, Party C would have had to go beyond saying “just the city name” and since the city name and the team name were the same thing, and thus would have to have said “AS Roma” instead of just Roma.

So what’s your opinion? If you have any other questions, I’ll be glad to answer them.

2

IMHO Party A won the bet. Roma is a club. He did just say a city name, but it is the name of the club as well. No-one calls it AS Roma, in the same way no-one says Manchester United FC (plc).

If he had just said the city name, he would have said Rome. Party C may have just guessed it, but he got it right.

3

AS stands for Associazione Sportiva, which if I use Google it tells me it translates to Sports Association.

If the key is that the name requires the addition of the fact that you are referring to the Sports Association Rome, then friend B should win.

If, on the other hand typically Sports Association is rarely included in the name, then friend A should win.

As the official name of the TEAM is AS Roma (according their website), IMHO friend B should win, because the name of the TEAM is AS Roma and not simply Roma.

4

As an American with limited knowledge of European soccer, I would say that person A wins the bet.

I am not sure where you are located, but I am willing to bet that an American answering the question would do the following:
-If that person didn’t know the true team name and was just guessing and hoping to get lucky, he would have said “Rome”, the actual city name. Not “Roma”.
-By saying “Roma” this person seems to have demonstrated at least a cursory knowledge of team naming conventions above what a casual American fan might now.

Granted, this is all irrelevant in a non-US, soccer intensive atmosphere.

5

If they speak english, then party A ought to win, because in english, “Roma” is more a type of tomato than it is a city.

“He can’t name just the city” is a silly condition when the there are clubs that are named simply for the city, even if they have “AS” tacked on the front, since “AS” is a generic that’s tacked on to all the names.

6

I hate to disagree, but I’d say B wins. I would imagine that the stipulation that C can’t say “just the city name” is in place to stop the player saying Roma or Parma or Bologna or some other city name, and happening to pick one that has a Serie A team. The condition seems to prohibit C from naming a city.

Since C said the name of the biggest city in Italy, it’s not unreasonable to suppose that it was a pure guess, and thus C has displayed no knowledge. But it’s still a harsh condition, in view of the number of teams with names of that form.

If you can’t formulate a bet in such a way that you agree on the outcome, then you should probably declare the bet void.

7

Does every club carry that “AS” tag? (Like “FC” is appended to all English clubs?)

If yes: A wins
If no: B wins

My best guess is that not all clubs carry it, so B wins.

8

I’m thinking of this in terms of American football: if A (me) and my equally obstinate and argumentative friend (B) went up to somebody who never watched football © and said to him “Name a football team” and he said “New York,” that wouldn’t work because there’s more than one NYC team. The qualifier “and you have to say more than just the city” is needed in case C names a city that has more than one team. But in your case, C didn’t know the qualifier. That makes the bet invalid.

I don’t know if there are Italian cities that have more than one soccer club, but if there are, that makes the bet flawed. C didn’t know the qualifier, so how could be depended on to know the right criteria for the answer? Both A and B should pay him a dollar for wasting his time.

9

I’d say give it to A. Roma is by far the most common name for that club (nobody I’ve spoken with has ever added the AS); the AS really just draws its roots back to the days when these teams were actual sporting clubs, and had a wide range of sports on offer–something which is no longer the case.

(The AS part would be like asking someone to name the producers of Snow White, then saying they’re wrong when they say Disney, because it’s actually The Walt Disney Corporation.)

Plus, if you’re English-speaking (and a bunch of other languages, for that matter), the city is Rome, not Roma.

10

FWIW, I know it won’t have much bearing on the bet, but Arsenal is the name of a place in south London, where the team comes from. I don’t know about Juventus, however.

11

C did know the qualifier at the time of his answer. And I don’t think the New York comparison is valid, because if someone says Roma they could only be talking about one team. If they were talking about the other team in Rome, they’d say Lazio.

And I don’t think every team has an “AS,” but I think they all have some sort of qualifier like that, denoting they are an athletic club.

Yes, we all do speak English, and we’re all Americans.