[Sca-cooks] Soccer, was, Re: Juana la Loca

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Feb 27, 2008, at 1:28 PM, rattkitten at bellsouth.net wrote:

> Ok quibbling aside...
> What is the difference (for those of us who aren't sports  
> enthusiasts)  I thought Soccer was Football.
> Please explain.  You can do so off list if we think it is going to  
> start a whole sports thread.  Cause I know that this is off topic.   
> But I am curious.

I don't think there's much material for a separate thread. The deal is  
that football of various kinds is ancient, and with the advent in the  
19th century of things like steamships and train travel, intertown and  
even international rivalries between teams of players of what used to  
be a local or pick-up activity (just as was beginning to happen in the  
US with baseball), developed, and it became necessary for teams to  
agree on a set of rules. Previously rules were traditionally specific  
to a given location or group of teams/players (such as with  those  
Robin Hood movies where they speak of Barnsdale rules for staff- 
fighting, or Marquess of Queensbury rules for boxing).

Enter the European (or British, or whatever it was, it'd be easy to  
look it up) Football Association, with its new set of written-down,  
universal rules for all players and teams choosing to adhere to their  
international standard. Games played according to those rules became  
known as Association Football, to distinguish them from games that  
weren't, such as Rugby Football (unique to a college and its environs,  
originally).

"Soccer" is generally believed to be a typical British diminutive and  
abbreviation for "Association".

Adamantius