Brazil's Humiliating Defeat

[Barnaby]

Soccer fans: Is there anything in the history of soccer equivalent to this?

All sports fans: Same question but applied to all sports. The last Super Bowl was certainly a surprising blow out, but this feels different. Seven goals would be like the equivalent of an NFL team scoring 70+ points on an opponent. I've seen this done in relatively high profile games in college, but not on a world wide stage.

What, in anything, compares?

[El White Chap]

Football, the bloody game is called football.

Hence;

FIFA = Fédération Internationale de Football Association

[bolo]

There are a lot of football matches that ended in two-digit:0 wins but not a lot of them were as important as last night's historical match or took place between two teams that were both rated as title-worthy. Well, we still are but Brazil lost a lot of their tailfeathers it seems. I've never seen a national selection brake down like that. If they really depend on Neymar so much, they're doing something very, very wrong. Ah well, and then there's Scolari, guess it's time for him to go.

[Robert]

Brazil, like Argentina and Portugal, are a one man team and last night they had to play without the one man.

I like Brazil as a rule, but it's a real shame that in this particular World Cup really good teams like Colombia and Chile had to go out so that this bunch of donkeys could be minced by the Germans.

[John Wheat]

Most of the players that played last night will never play for Brazil after this World Cup and rightfully so. But England will continue to pick the same old losers.

[Ginger]

Had Neymar played, then they might have lost 7-3 or so. In the end, what killed them was that they're not a team, but a bunch of 'beautiful game' showboaters who fell apart without their captain da Silva's guidance the second that something went wrong.

[jason_c]

Football, the bloody game is called football.

Hence;

FIFA = Fédération Internationale de Football Association

If there is anything more annoying than an American calling football soccer it is someone who gets annoyed at Americans calling the sport soccer.

[GUT]

Most Aussies call it Soccer too which name actually derives from Association Football.

[El White Chap]

If there is anything more annoying than an American calling football soccer it is someone who gets annoyed at Americans calling the sport soccer.

And what's even more annoying than those two?

A dipstick who feels others have no right to express their rightful opinions

[GUT]

Biggest problem here is that we have 4 games that all go by name of football and in general if just used as "going to the football" it would depend on what area as to what game you were going to see, but most likely Aussie Rules Football otherwise known as AFL or Australian Football League.

[Robert]

In the mid 60s, there was a Sunday TV programme of football highlights called Star Soccer. It was presented by Peter Lorenzo. After a year or two it was replaced by The Big Match, hosted by Brian Moore.

"Football" is the more commonly used word in the UK but "soccer" was being used at least in the 60s.

[El White Chap]

And herein lies the issue. The traditional rules for the modern game known as football were devised in Britain, in the private schools of England. The game with these rules was and always has been called football.

Following the establishment of football with it's newly found rulebook came other different sports around the world which involved a ball and were named by the same title.

Those countries/regions with more popular sports by the same name of football decided to call football by the name of soccer. Thus the name soccer spread and was used even in Britain by some following it becoming popular abroad.

Please do correct me if I'm inaccurate on any of this.

[jason_c]

And what's even more annoying than those two?

A dipstick who feels others have no right to express their rightful opinions

Thank you for the name calling. Now, why don't you answer the legitimate and interesting question in the op rather than descending into the petty mindedness of your original reply.

[Sam Flynn]

Those countries/regions with more popular sports by the same name of football decided to call football by the name of soccer.

The earliest references to "soccer" in the Oxford English Dictionary are 19th-Century British. The first reference - spelt "socca", clearly revealing the word's origins in Association Football - is by the English poet, Ernest Dowson, in 1889. The Westminster Gazette, in 1894, talks of "the rival attractions of rugger and socker"... a good sign that both pet-names (for Rugby Football and Association Football) originated in the English public school system.

Yer toffs have a habit of using the "-er" suffix when inventing nicknames - compare "brekker" (breakfast), "ekker" (exercise) "Johnners" (Brian Johnstone) and "Blowers" (Henry Blofeld). "Soccer", it seems, belongs to that very same, and very English, tradition.

Interestingly, the use of "footer" as slang for football, was first recorded in a reference to Harrow Public School in 1863, the very year in which the Football Association was formed, and the term "Association Football" coined.

[Barnaby]

I didn't mean to offend by calling the sport soccer. That is what the vast majority of Americans call it and we mean no disrespect!