Putting the game under an analytical microscrope using statistics, economics, psychology and intuition to try and transform a dogmatic sport.
At this point, let’s agree to call the global game “soccer” and the American game “football.” Many people, both in American and Europe, imagine that soccer is an American term invented in the late twentieth century to distinguish the game from gridiron. Indeed, anti-American Europeans often frown on the use of th eword. They consider it a mark of American imperialism. This is a silly position. “Soccer was the most common name for the game in Britain from the 1890′s until the 1970′s. As far as one can tell, when the North American Soccer League brought soccer to the Americans in the 1970s, and Americans quite reasonably adopted the English word, the British stopped using it and reverted to the word football. We will compare soccer with football, and the readers will know what we mean.
Page 158 Excerpt
No comments yet.