Does Soccer Still Need Headers?

That the continent’s middle class is expanding is easier to overlook, but it is no less important. Women’s soccer — like men’s soccer — should not just be the preserve of populous and wealthy nations. Strength in these matters always comes from depth. It is not just how high the elite can soar that makes games entertaining and tournaments compelling, but how broad the challenges they face along the way.

Correspondence

An oldie but a goodie from Alfons Sola this week. “Have you ever thought about just calling it football and stop pretending like it’s soccer?” he wrote, despite (or possibly because of) spending five years living in New Jersey. “We all know calling it soccer is some kind of strange situation that exists in the United States, right?”

Well, yes and no, Alfons. In England, for example, there is a venerable magazine called World Soccer. Many people start their Saturdays watching a show called Soccer A.M. If they choose to do so, they can then follow all of the day’s action on a program called Soccer Saturday.

I often wonder whether their presenters are told quite as often as I am that the term soccer is an American abomination. Or, for that matter, whether someone like Matt Busby, the legendary manager of Manchester United, was met with sound and fury when he had the nerve to call his autobiography ‘Soccer At The Top’.

Forgive me if we are traipsing down a familiar path, but as far as I know, “football” and “soccer” were largely interchangeable in England until some vague point in the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s. Quite what changed to make people quite so angry about the very sight of one of those words, I’m not sure, but I’m going to guess it had something to do with increased American attention on the sport.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/sports/soccer/soccer-headers.html