More America bashing

[Johnny Crumplin Football]

Hoffenheim’s dream first season in the Bundesliga continues to get better as it moved three points clear at the top with a 3-1 win at Cologne on Saturday.

The league newcomers had begun the day level on points with Bayer Leverkusen, but now have daylight over their rivals, who lost a 2-1 decision at lowly Arminia Bielefeld.

I'm sorry but this kind of reporting is unacceptable. Is it singular or plural FFS. WTF is a decision. We are not talking about a lefty getiing a fcuking decision or no decision in that pyjama-wearing excuse of a sport called rounders now are we. Why the FCUK can't the Yanks use the correct terminology for the sport they are supposed to be reporting on.

Rant over

 

[The Large One]

Convention has dictated that, in written and spoken English, football clubs are referred to in the third person plural conjugation 'they' or 'them'.

However, in technically correct English, a football club is a single entity and therefore ought to be referred to, in the third person singular, as 'it'.

But you're right, it does sounds weird.

 

[Mr deez]

Convention has dictated that, in written and spoken English, football clubs are referred to in the third person plural conjugation 'they' or 'them'.

However, in technically correct English, a football club is a single entity and therefore ought to be referred to, in the third person singular, as 'it'.

But you're right, it does sounds weird.

Correct, but don't It/NewcomerS contradict each other?

 

[Johnny Crumplin Football]

Yeah TLO you are right but their is NEVER any consistency in American sports writing. Surely if Hoffenheim is singular then ''it'' should be newcomer not newcomers. Maybe I am just old and grumpy and sick of working with retards

 

[Nemesis]

Yeah TLO you are right but their is NEVER any consistency in American sports writing. Surely if Hoffenheim is singular then ''it'' should be newcomer not newcomers. Maybe I am just old and grumpy and sick of working with retards

Ahem!

 

[Johnny Crumplin Football]

Good call Nemesis. I blame that nasty Spanish Siglo wine

 

[Johnny Crumplin Football]

Good call?! Been working with our friends across the pond for too long BUDDY

 

[The Large One]

Yeah TLO you are right but their is NEVER any consistency in American sports writing. Surely if Hoffenheim is singular then ''it'' should be newcomer not newcomers. Maybe I am just old and grumpy and sick of working with retards

True.

 

[RexCathedra]

Americanisms in sportswriting

"Red Sox are...." is natural. Most American teams, except for a few execrable neologisms (Utah Jazz, e.g.) are plural, hence the plural verb.

"Boston is..." is also natural. The city -- used for the team in synecdoche -- is always singular.

The difficulty arises when a writer uses both ways of referring to a club in a single paragraph, or even worse, the same story. Since in European football teams often don't have a separate team name -- is 'Hoffenheim' the team, or the city? -- such problems are virtually certain to occur. (If you're writing on deadline, for a wire service where all the copy editors got laid off to make the bottom line for the fourth quarter look better, it's not surprising.)

Brighton is the jewel of Sussex.
Brighton are the disappointment of the League One season.
The Seagulls are under-performing to date.
Brighton is looking to shore up its midfield.

It's easy to slide from one to the other...

The use of 'decision' in US sportswriting is a holdover from the days when boxing was, after baseball, the other American great national sport. There are traces of boxing-speak in sportswriting generally: pitchers are knocked out in the third inning, the Titans' defense is lights-out, e.g.

Pro --not college -- football, and basketball, are johnnies-come-lately. Hockey is, and ever will be, a minor major sport. And the less said about NASCAR, the better. Eighty years ago it was baseball, boxing, and college football.

 

[Nottseagull]

However, in technically correct English, a football club is a single entity and therefore ought to be referred to, in the third person singular, as 'it'..

But is it technically correct English to refer to a team called Rovers or Rangers etc in the singular? (Although I accept it is better grammar than starting a sentence with a preposition!)

 

[Lyndhurst 14]

in that pyjama-wearing excuse of a sport called rounders

…….Best definition yet of baseball! And as for Fox Soccer Channel and their phoney “Bass” pub setting - that said their football coverage is quite broad - Premiership, Serie A and Argentinian this Sunday - it’s just that most of the commentary gets you reaching for the mute button.

 

[fatbadger]

Correct grammar has the singular, eg 'Brighton and Hove Albion is by far the greatest team the World has ever known'. And, indeed, Americans use that construction (which is why album sleeves from American bands say things like "Metallica is James Hetfield etc"), but then American English has been somewhat frozen in time by the conservative power of Websters. As a result, there is an argument that American English is closer to 'proper' English than British English. Of course, there is no such thing as 'proper English' - the phrase actually means 'American English is closer to 17th-century English than modern British English'.

Languages, however, are living entities, and the construction which makes a plural of *a* team, as in 'Brighton and Hove Albion are by far the greatest team the World has ever known' has become standard usage in Britain in the 20th century (it was still rare for much of the 19th century). The reasons for that usage are rather opaque, although it could be argued that it is the result of either phrasal abbreviation ('the players known by the team monicker Brighton and Hove Albion are by far the greatest team of players the World has ever known) or a form of metonymy (with the team name treated as a sort of attribute of the players which make up that team) with the grammatical form not shifting in line with the metaphor. Or something.

 

[Nottseagull]

'Brighton and Hove Albion are by far the greatest team the World has ever known' has become standard usage in Britain in the 20th century (it was still rare for much of the 19th century). QUOTE]

But that's only because we weren't formed until the 20th century!