[nerd]
Football is called football because its played on foot (rather than on horesback, like polo, or Buzkashi, which is like polo but with a dead goat instead of a ball)).
Original, medieval football had few rules. You had two teams: this end of the town, and the other end of the town. You had a pitch (the town). The objective was to get the ball to the opponent’s end of the town. By any means necessary.
Over time, various more formalized versions were developed, with each of the big British private schools (which are called “public schools” for goodness knows what reason) having their own versions. Some, like at Rugby School, let you pick up the ball and run with it, while others only let you kick it. Eventually, some people decided to get together and form the Football Association and create some standardised rules for what they called Association Football.
English “public” school children seem to like making up silly names for things, so Rugby Football became “rugger” and Association Football became “soccer”. (So soccer, far from being a bizarre Americanism, was actually named as such by the people who played it originally in England).
There are now lots of different, formalized versions of “football”. Rugby, American, and Australian Rules, among others all let you pick up the ball. (In fact, there seem to be more versions that let you run with the ball than not, although soccer is the most popular version).
[/nerd]
I think soccer can be fun to play, and good games can be very exciting to watch.
But to be honest, I’ve pretty much given up watching it, because there is so much faking and diving these days.
