On the road to South Africa.- Soccer? Football?

And here we are, once again! Finally, after four long years the long awaited for whistle will be blown again down in South Africa to kick off a whole month of maddening euphoria around a ball and around the world, from June 11 to July 11.

Not even my humble quarters in Toronto escape from the noise. Home to over 188 different ethnic groups, our streets will be flooded by waving flags, chants and just plain marrymaking regardless who scores and who gets scored. All the chatty-chat will be on football here, and football there… football everywhere? I’m not sure.

So, let’s make this clear. The beautiful game is soccer, right? Not so fast. The world all over, or most of it, sings in unison to the beauty of football. Italians: you’re exempted; you can disagree and continue on with your calcio (let’s pronounce it: kál-shee-o). You’re the reigning world champions. Period.

How come around this neck of the woods we just hear of soccer while football as a name has gone awry? Isn’t that funny that in the NFL the foot touches the ovoid ball only once and for a fraction of a second and still the whole business is called football?

Let’s ask those who know. Here comes Gerry Archer, from the University of Texas, an Englishman himself, with a cool story about this word. Gerry claims soccer as a word for the British crown and insists that it was coined by the forefathers of the English Premier League. Soccer was taken from the first two syllables of a longer word: association. He says that some football official of yore, Charles Wreford-Brown, in 1863, used the word soccer to tell it apart from rugby. Back then, the word football was used to speak of the two sports. And soccer was born, right there, on the same lofty cradle of football. Sorry MLS, but there are aliens even on your name.

South Africans had no qualms to christen their new temple Soccer City. However, worship will be conducted in high quality football as we follow the ups and downs of teams, players and coaches we root for or against. Just ask our very own K'naan. Check him out!

(Written for http://www.futbolwithu.com/, a portal designed, managed and maintained by a Middle School kid in Chicago)