Leaving aside my compatriots' forgivable tendency to refer to the beautiful game as "soccer" (which is after all derived from "association football," I use it for tags here myself), most of us fundamentally don't seem to get how to write about it. This was made evident by Chris Ryan's well-meaning but naive account of the recent Champions League final on Grantland.com, an amusing contender to the sublime Run of Play's title as the best sports and culture blog around.
The first few errors aren't as toe-curlingly grievous as those who refer to the "EPL" or worse "BPL" but nonetheless a few bear mention. First, Chicharito nickname means "Little Green Pea" on account of his green eyes, not "Pea." A subtle difference but a venial since nonetheless. Second, the immigration official Ryan meets tells him he believes: "Barcelona is going to win." Fine in American English, but in the British Isles a collective noun is treated as a plural. I sniff fabulism, especially since our intrepid correspondent bothers to refer in the following paragraph to "Indian takeaways" as opposed to "take-out places" as they'd be known Stateside. Third, speaking as a current English teacher and former lawyer and journalist, I feel compelled to point out that the demonym for the people of Catalonia (or technically Catalunya) and their language is Catalan. (Though it's to Ryan's credit he distinguishes it from Spanish, or rather Castilian.)
However, it's this phrase that got my goat (and no I haven't abandoned the Arsenal and morphed into some retrograde Citeh fan yearning for the bad old days and Shaun Goater): "I'm talking about being around fans who seem to breathe in the sport, who follow their teams all over England and all over Europe, who are so passionate about their clubs, they are moved to song." Has he ever been to an actual football match or even Nevada Smith's? If I even have to explain this to you, this post will make little sense.
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