Football vs Soccer

Name are important in our life. We have our own name that no one else have, even sports have different names as well (baseball, basketball); but, why the Americans change the universal name “football” to “soccer”, is it fair for the sports itself and to the fans loving the sport.Whether you care about this topic or not, the truth is it does matter.

In present time, if you ever asked an American about the sport we all play and love, they will call it “soccer”. I cannot count how many times I have spoken to an American and feel the urge to bang their head into the wall so they can figure out that they have been wrong the whole time. I would rather die than listening to them talking about soccer. In fact, all we, football lovers, can feel when they, the Americans, refer our beloved sport, football, “soccer” is pain, the pain that we experience every day in life. Okay, maybe it is not really painful but the way they refer to the sport is simply unjustified. As such, their inability to understand the spiritual value of the sport, causing them to call football “soccer”.

This can be a hard idea for many of you to perceive, as most of you have been referred to this sport as “soccer” for your entire time, which is fine since you guys live in North America, where most of you care about is ice hockey or basketball. Why does “soccer” become the name for the sport? Why does “soccer” get to be so popular amongst the world? Why does “soccer” have a huge impact on the globe?

To begin, if someone said the word “soccer” is better than “football”, they are not only lying to you, to everyone in the world, but also to all the football fans around the world, including me.  “Soccer” has never been a popular word amongst the people around the globe, it is not the one, it will never be the one. The Americans seem to have a great influence on the world, simply because they have a large amount of coverage around the world with a large amount of journalists travelling around the world spreading out the wrong idea about the sport.

Some may argue that the reason behind the Americans calling this sport “soccer” is because they have their own favourite sport “American football”, so their own Medias and articles cannot refer “football” to both sports as it will cause confusing. However, ladies and gentlemen, football is invented way before “American football” in the year 220 to be exact; Meanwhile, American football is invented in 1869. The point is therefore invalid in a process because they could call their own sport a different name, instead they used the name “football” which was invented way before then.

Basically, all of you can see quite clearly, “football” can be divided into 2 parts “foot” and “ball”. Our beloved sport’s purpose is to pass the ball using our feet, cross the ball using our feet, and score the goal using our feet.  So then, ladies and gentlemen, it is just plain suitable to call the sport “football”. Folks, let me ask you this, what does Americans football’s ball look like? Well, it does look like an egg, does not it? By definition, a ball is “an object with a spherical shape”, a football ball is a round shape; however, the American football’s is not a sphere shape by any mean so it does not qualified as a “ball”, but we can call it a “handegg”. Meanwhile, ladies and gentlemen, American football mostly uses arm muscles to overpower the opponent and throw the ball around so they can a point by having the ball in the arm, racing to the end of the field.

Some may even argue that American football also uses feet to kick the ball up field or score a field goal.  So technically the players still use their feet, so “football” is valid. However, the game is hardly ever played with foot nor with a ball. I have not watched the game that much, but I mostly see players try to outmuscle the other team, carry the ball around, smash for a few minutes, and onto commercial break – the most annoying period of the game. Also, a few punting is not enough to be called “football”. In contrast, the game of real “football” is played exclusively with legs and a few moment with head and chest just to control the ball. Ladies and gentlemen, if Americans call their sport “American rugby” or even “handegg”, I doubt there will be any complains.

The word “soccer” is not even a unique word from Americans. In the past, the United Kingdom loves the word ended with “er”. As they called rugby “rugger”, they want to have a nickname for “football” as well, so they made “soccer” as a nickname for it. Back to the present, Americans used the word “football” to call their own sports, and used the nickname of it “soccer” to call the universal sport. It is really interesting to know why they call that as “soccer” is a really old nickname and it has been forgotten by the British. After all, it is not a good name nor significance to the game itself.

To conclude, “soccer” has been increased in popularity over a couple of years and Americans are responsible for this with all their medias and coverage of the sport. Furthermore, the Americans have given a name to a wrong sport. Finally, the originally of long forgotten word “soccer” has caused the stir on why Americans insisted on using that word. I cannot help it but fear for our beloved sport, or must I say, the word “football”.  After all, we, football fans, do not wish to be in a world with “soccer” as there is only one sport, football existing on this planet. Knowing the influence of Americans have on the world, my fear are undeniably justified. I want to end this with a quote from a British guy Daniel Gooch, “Okay, you can call your sport football, but when it comes to our “football”, don’t call it soccer”

Fika - A meaning of life

While surfing the net and reading articles, I have reached a really strange word with no translation, Fika. What is Fika? Where is it from? Why is it important to the local people?

By definition, Fika is "having a break, most often a coffee break with people" . It is not just coffee break, it holds a larger significance to the tradition itself and to the local people. It is a social experience, setting aside the stress of work, school, and life to enjoy a quality time with friends, family, or even colleagues. It can be anywhere as well: home, cafe, work, etc. I have spoken to a lot of my Swedish friends and I have learned that they prefer getting Fika from Ikea - weird, huh! 

Imagine yourself walking down the street, you see a beautiful girl standing outside of a cafe, your first pickup line will be "Hey, you mind having a fika?" Swedes love Fika, they absolutely love it. Oh, forgot to say Fika is originated from Sweden, a relatively large country in Northern Europe. Swedes prefer not to have a translation for Fika, they wanna keep the significance and the traditional meaning of the word Fika, even more than the term "coffee break" alone.  

Swedes love sweet, haven't I told you that... Cakes, Cookies, name it yourselves. As statistic has shown, Swedes are amongst the top consumers of coffee in the world. Sweet can have a lot of different meaning but for Swedish, it can mean appreciation of good things in life. They even have their own recipe to make these type of sweet foods, showing their appreciation and the importance of fika to Swedes. 

Okay, look delicious, hmm!! Try it out for yourselves!!!