I’m not into sports. Never have been and probably never will be. I remember the sixth grade when my dad enrolled me in Upward Basketball. The recruiting coaches were grateful because a) I’m Black and b) I’m tall. They thought I’d be the female Dikembe Mutombo. LOLZ nah. As soon as I stepped my pink Nike-clad foot on the court I flopped. As a matter of fact, I fumbled my way through two seasons of Upward before my dad gave those hoop dreams up. Ever since then, I haven’t paid much attention to ESPN. I don’t think that watching the drafts to see the cutest players counts, right?
Anyway, the 2014 FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) World Cup is here and I haven’t a clue as to what’s going on. I can be woman enough to admit it. Don’t front…I know that I’m not alone in this. Thank goodness for the benevolent spirit of the Internet – there are a plethora of guides for the clueless spectators like myself.
Let’s start with basic terminology. Do you know your goal line from your goal kick? Randolph Youth Soccer has an A-Z glossary with every single soccer term under the sun. NESN’s glossary is a little more streamlined, with some of the most common words you’ll hear during any given game:
Back: a defender
Banana kick: a type of kick that has curved trajectory to get around the defense or goalkeeper. Think Bend It Like Beckham.
Card: There are two types of cards — yellow and red. A player will get a yellow card as a warning for unsportsmanlike behavior. If a player receives two yellow cards in the same game, they get a red card, and are ejected from play for that game and usually receive some sort of suspension.
Chip pass/shot: Pass or shot used to get the ball over the defender or goalkeeper. You know, the Phil Mickelson flop shot, but with a soccer ball.
Football or footy: Easy one. That’s soccer, or at least it is to the rest of the world.
Injury time: Since there’s running time in soccer, there’s injury time added to the end of each half to make up for any time that may have been lost due to an injury stoppage. The amount of time is at the discretion of the referee.
Juggling: This is done as practice and is done by keeping the ball in the air with one’s body, without any use of the hands. Juggling while juggling would be extremely difficult.
Match: What soccer players call a game.
Pitch: Soccer fans commonly refer to the field as the “pitch.”
Round: Like many other sports, this is a stage of a tournament. The World Cup has five rounds.
Tackling: The act of taking away the ball from the opponent by kicking it or stopping it with one’s foot. It’s a far cry from tackling in American football.
Buzzfeed’s Beginners Guide to the World Cup breaks the actual event down, starting with the 32 participating teams and ending with the eliminating bracket.
[Image via Buzzfeed]
For water cooler talk, NY Mag’s World Cup Guide for the Vaguely Interested will work wonders. It’s “everything you need to know about the World Cup from the best ‘everything you need to know about the World Cup’ articles,” and specifies who the favorites are…and if the U.S. has a chance of winning (spoiler alert: we don’t).
