Introduction
The most popular sport in the world is football or soccer. In Europe this beautiful sport it is called football and it makes a lot of sense because except the goalie all the other players use their feet to play the game. In the United States football is completely another game, it is played almost only with the hands and it has nothing in common with European football. The European football it is called soccer in the United States.
It can be a little confusing for a European tourist when it visits the United States because if he hears people talking about a football game he might think it’s the same game that is played in Europe.
History
There are a lot of differences between the two sports but the main discussion still remains. Is it football or soccer? All over the world football or soccer has millions of fans. There are around 90 million football or soccer fans in the United States of America.
In the beginning football or soccer wasn’t very well received in the United States so there had to be some modification to the rules just to make the game appealing to Americans. When soccer games where played the clock started at 45:00 min and counted down to zero, in football it is exactly the opposite. The rules where changed back because football or soccer fans realized that they want to be compete and have the same rules as all the other football or soccer clubs in the world.
The Australian Soccer Association changed its name to the Football Federation Australia in 2005. This means that Australia recognized European football or soccer as just football.
It would probably be harder to change soccer to football in the United States because American Football has a huge number of fans and besides the MLS (Major League Soccer) never had the intention to call soccer football. There are people in television that use the term football for soccer and all the fans understand so there isn’t much of a problem of how we refer to football or soccer. The important thing is that the fans understand and love the sport.
It really doesn’t matter how we call this magnificent sport, because people all over the globe will understand when we are speaking of Messi or Ronaldo that is about European football or even if we go to Europe and we say soccer people will understand that is the same amazing sport.
Features
Football or soccer has the power to bring people together and there is no greater spectacle in the world of sports. The Champions League is the top competition for soccer or football clubs in Europe. In 2009 the UEFA Champions League finals had a bigger audience then the Super Bowl, with an audience of 206 million viewers.
Football or soccer has fans all over the world and people love to watch the World Cup. The World Cup is the biggest event in football or soccer, with countries from all the continents competing for one trophy.
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