• The French footballers who converted to Islam. [Culture of Soccer]
• A Champions League for the Americas? [The Offside]
• As if she hasn’t dealt with enough, Hope solo is also a dork. [Who Ate All The Pies]
• Avram Grant could use some help. [BBC]
• Then again, maybe he should just be replaced by someone a little more qualified. [Fox Sports]

It’s an argument that tires all of us: the name of the game—is it called “football” or “soccer”?

Those who call it soccer think that those who call it football are Eurosnobs. Those who call it football believe that those who call it soccer are ignorant (and American; but they also believe those two qualifiers are indistinguishable).

Truth is, the argument has been going on for a long time. See, for instance, this letter to the editor of the New York Times in December of 1905. A fella named Francis Tabor calls it “a thousand pities” that the paper referred to the sport as “socker.”

Tabor also recites the commonly-agreed-upon history of the word “soccer”:

As a matter of fact, it was a fad at Oxford and Cambridge to use “er” at the end of many words, such as foot er, sport er, and as Association did not take an “er” easily, it was, and is, sometimes spoken of as Soccer.

Remember when U.S. international Bobby Convey was injured for, like, a year? Well, he finally got healthy and scored a beauty against Liverpool for his club side Reading.

Guess what? He’s injured again.

Remember that Nike commercial wherein Wayne Rooney draws a target on a camera lens, walks 20-30 yards away, juggles a ball for a couple seconds, then drills the camera? If you don’t, here it is:

A lot of people thought the video was altered and I suppose that’s understandable. Advertisers have used camera and computer-generated trickery to show athletes doing the impossible.

In fact, Powerade ran commercials with the tagline “Impossible Is Nothing.” One commercial showed LeBron James knocking down full-court shots with ease and another showed Michael Vick killing dogs throwing the pigskin out of a stadium.

In order to dispel any rumors that Rooney’s shot was similarly rigged, I invite you to view the making of the commercial, below:

Last week, the New York Times unleashed their massive archives onto unsuspecting internet slobs everywhere.

By removing the so-called “paywall” that kept hundreds of millions of readers at bay, the Times relented to common sense and opened their archives (dating back to 1851) and other “Times Select” content to the general public.

This decision led enterprising people to dig through the mess to find some olde-timey goodness. Per the norm, Kottke did it best.

I did a little searching of my own to discover that the first mention of soccer in the New York Times (at least in the searchable archives) was on June 19, 1885. The article is entitled “Football By Electric Light” and is intriguing for a few reasons:

• “Electric light” was evidently rare enough to warrant a mention in the headline
• We still called it football (association football)
• The article was all of 32 words long. (And you thought soccer coverage in America was dismal today!)
• It is printed proof that there has never been a respectable New York soccer club prior to or since Pele’s Cosmos. I kid…

Here’s how it looked:

As a point of reference, this article appeared 22 years after the English F.A. ushered in the modern game.

Stay tuned for more of “From the NYT Archives.”

15 months ago, we talked about Anthony LaPaglia’s love for the beautiful game after he appeared on ESPN during a Champion’s League game. At that time, I stated:

Our game will not take hold in this country until soccer promoters in America realize that soccer is a product that needs to be sold—get this—to Americans. Americans love television; this television star loves soccer. The cross-marketing is brilliant and I hope we see more.

I still think this is true (see: Drew Carey). I also think soccer in the U.S. will benefit from good ownership.

It turns out that LaPaglia might just be a guy who loves the game so much that he would buy an MLS team. According to LaPaglia (who, by the way, seems to harbor some crazy idea that MLS would work in Hollywood):

The key to all of it is a youth development program. If you don’t have one, you don’t have a future. In Australia, really good players leave for 10 bucks. What I would bring in would be the European mentality of football – the work ethic and the passion. I have that passion. This is what I love.”

I love hearing a guy so passionate. Let’s hope he doesn’t disappear without a trace.