GOAL!!!!! In English, is the game called 'football' or 'soccer'? How do you tell someone who's winning and what the score is? Just in time for the FIFA World Cup, a sports vocabulary lesson! Are you supporting Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, or another country? Let me know in the comments! And take a quiz on this video here:
TRANSCRIPT
Hi, guys. What's happening? Right now, it's World Cup. Are you watching? I think the world is watching the World Cup.
Today, I'm going to teach you about football. Please, please, please, please, please do not call it "soccer". Let's go through this. In Canada and in America, people are quite stupid, including me. For some reason, people like to say "soccer". Let's imagine that we are playing a game with your foot and a ball. Well, I would call that "football". So one rule that I have if you ever meet me is please don't call it "soccer". It's "football". In kind of a slang kind of way, you can call it "footy". It's more British English, but you can call it that just as long as you do not call it "soccer". Please do not call it "soccer". Just to clarify this for you. The organization is called FIFA. What do you think the F stands for? It's not called "SIFA"; it's called "FIFA". It's called "football". So need I remind you; do not say "soccer". Thank you. Public service announcement is now over. Let's get into the game.
Maybe you are very excited to watch the game. You are not sure what verb to use in English because we have "look", "see", and "watch". This is easy. Because everyone's running and smashing and biting people -- don't bite people when you play football. You're going to actually watch the football game. So you can say to your friends, "Hey! Let's watch the game." And your friend says, "Yes! Let's do that. I'm excited."
What happens in the World Cup -- in the World Cup only -- is they have different groups: A, B, C, D. And when the teams play each other, groups get disqualified. So what happens is in each group, one country will advance. So for example, I can say, "In group A, USA advances." But they didn't, did they? History has been written.
If you are with a group of people and they're not wearing any team colors, you can say, "Who are you supporting?" Or, "Who are you going for?" This means, "Who are you cheering for? Who, like -- oh, come on! Go! Oh, I didn't get it." Do you get really excited when you watch your team play? I don't. I don't have a team. Canada doesn't even know how to say the sport correctly.
One thing that happens in the World Cup is there are many, many games in one day. Up to three games a day. So you can ask someone, "Who plays today? Who plays tomorrow?" I'm going to come back after I go have half-time and teach you some vocabulary.