Soccer Never Sleeps!
Brooke and I have been trying to learn soccer (or ‘futbol’) for our Spain party. To be quite honest, I knew nothing about the game despite my being to many past games in my life. I mean, I always knew the gist of it – you get the ball in the goal; you don’t use your hands unless you are the goalie – but I didn’t really know the game of soccer. It’s actually super cool! I am certainly not coordinated, but I learned I am not too bad at the sport and neither is Brooke. Wow.
Did you know you could make the game of SOCCER even COOLER? Yes, you can. If your child is like my Brooke, they love things that light up and glow in the dark and love to be out at dusk. I have great memories of running around fireflies and playing kick the can and my daughter gets to play with a light up soccer goal and ball set.
This set includes a wonderful large size post (it is a light post that includes four stakes) and so much fun to play with the mini glow in the dark soccer before wind-down bedtime rituals. We like to usually do night walks, but night soccer has taken over our nightly family exercise. And – we dig it!
So – LEARNING TIME!
Why are we (Americans) the only ones who call it soccer? I mean, REALLY?
Well, the truth is…..this is not only FALSE, it is also quite an interesting story of how SOCCER became FOOTBALL. Yes, you heard that right. The sport was called SOCCER first. Didn’t know that? It’s true!
It came from England and was originally used by something called Association Football (by very upper-class elite schools) to this popular ‘kickball’ game around the 1860s. However, due to translation and wide-spread popularity among the so-called ‘lower-class’, the term ‘football’ or ‘footy’ was coined as a nickname for the sport.
It stuck! Soccer didn’t. Although since immigrants brought the name soccer to the United States of America in the 19th century it was always the official name here. Add to that we have our own grid-iron American football, and well, you can see there is no going back on that name now!
So, I was a little surprised to find out that not only are Americans using the term correctly, they are also using the original name for the sport of soccer. Who knew that? Be honest!
Psst! Any one else following the matches of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil? It has also added some drama to our lives as we try and keep up with the group stages. Very fun for this newly established ‘futbol’ family.
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