[Pov]

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I always thought people in the US didn't like football, they play that other game instead, similar to rugby only with a suit of armour on.

Mack

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I think soccer is on its way to becoming quite popular here actually, though clearly not nearly as much as American football currently is. Most middle-aged Americans didn't grow up playing soccer, but a LOT of kids growing up now do so I expect in another ten years or so it will be as big a deal to the majority of Americans as it is to the lucky few of us now who already know what a great sport it is.

We just clinched for Germany a few weeks ago and our U-17 team advanced to the quarter finals of the World Championship yesterday by beating Italy 3-1. I'd say it's catching on. Look out. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Anyway, interesting terminology trivia, the use of "soccer" to refer to English football actually comes from the English. It's derived from association as in Association Football Club (AFC) from when you had association football and rugby football. But two-word names for sports are annoying so it was shortened to just rugby and football. Here we took the assoc and made it soccer, dropping the second part instead of the first. But as long as FIFA calls it football I think it's football on the world stage. Clearly that would create confusion in the United States though so we stick with soccer much like the Canadians.