Like many other things mentioned here, that's nothing to do with the sport itself. Over here we'll always say Team A are winning for all sports, even American ones. As most people here never hear sports commentary/analysis from anyone but British commentators, they have no idea there's another way of doing it. Australians use the American "rule" as well.
I just dont like it when blokes, , that have never played the game at a high level speak like this to try and sound like they have credibility. ESPECIALLY when they have an accent. just because you sound like that doesn't mean you know SH&T about the game.
I have to point out to folks that "Chelsea is losing" is the convention in American English. I guess folks adopt the Englishism out of habit of hearing UK announcers say it, but if you wrote an essay for an English class in America that way, it'd be off.
Yes, that's true, and I didn't mean to give the impression that it's done out of ignorance, if that's what I did. The rule in US schools is to treat collective nouns as singular. An American without a British influence will most likely say "Chelsea is...". There's just something about team sports that makes the issue a bit muddled, I think. Watching a team play and commenting on the activity of a group of dynamic individuals, I just can't feel comfortable referring to them in the singular. Maybe it's the influence of Br.E; I don't know.
One of the issues around sports teams in the US is they typically have a singular location name ("Atlanta") and a plural nickname ("Braves"). "Atlanta is" and "the Braves are" happen to both be correct in American usage. It becomes more awkward for Americans when the nickname is singular -- "Heat" and "Thunder" and we may no longer have a parallel construction when talking about 2 teams.
I am quite happy to be one of those people hated by the creator and first commenter in this (occasionally interesting, often maddening) thread. I do all of my reading about soccer on the sites of English newspapers (with the exception of this site), almost all of my soccer-related TV-news-watching via Sky Sports News, and all of my talking/writing about it with Europeans and Latin Americans (again, with the exception of this site). So the linguistic norms to which I have become accustomed are the English ones: "football", "nil", "pitch", the plural verb, et cetera. (I wrote "soccer" earlier in this paragraph as a conscious choice for use in this website; I would normally write/say "football" anywhere else. Also, I will mention that I prefer English-style spellings in the language in general; these I'll use everywhere.) As I am still in my first decade of fandom of the sport, the English terms are the first ones that I knew for soccer, and the ones that feel right to me. It strikes me as natural to to use "nil" for soccer and "nothing" for other sports. Sky Sports News evidently maintains a similar distinction. Last night I saw their report about the Yankees-Tigers game, and the presenter used the word "nothing" when mentioning the score. That report would suggest that that the word "nothing" feels more natural for baseball, even in a lingusitc environment where the word "nil" is the norm. This is completely analogous to the word "nil" feeling more natural for soccer, even in a linguistic environment where the word "nothing" is the norm. It will be interesting to monitor this during the World Series.
There was a piece on the BBC's website (and a corresponding article in the Guardian) last month on Americans adopting British slang. It's become kind of a general trend in the post-internet era.
I just learned something interesting today. I have always called a simple two teammate tactic of handing off the ball from one player moving in one direction back to a teammate moving in the opposite direction as a takeover. Today I found out the English call the same tactic a turnover. I never knew that. I like takeover better.
Boy do I feel provincial. I always thought that was called a "pass". I've certainly never heard it called anything else.
It is more then just a pass it is a 2 player tactic like the give and go. But is is very dangerous tactic when done horizontally. It kind of disappeared in the adult game. I believe that is a mistake. It's great to switch the field on a narrow field even in indoor on a gym floor. It is really great to get dangerous shots in the inside of the field in limited space. Go to the coaches part of the site and check out the thread "turnover"
"Heat are up by eight." "Thunder are out of timeouts." I don't think it becomes as awkward as you make it out to be; most will understand just fine. In any case, 'the' is usually added in front of a singular nickname to make things easier. It does sound odd though, when talking about the North Carolina State or Nevada "Wolf Pack" and Stanford "Cardinal." Same thing with say, the Minnesota "Wild."
It sounds like the Br. E influence. But would referring to the teams by their respective nicknames make any difference or does that make commentary even more confusing? I would definitely say "Chelsea is..." But I think I am comfortable saying "the Blues are..." as well, so long as anyone I'm talking to understands I'm referring to Chelsea instead of the NHL's St. Louis Blues, for example.
Awkward in that it's hard to switch back and forth for an American English speaker. People understand lots of things, but there's a desire to stick to a grammar that is consistent.
Yeah, I've seen that, but I can't recall ever hearing the commentator give it a name. Maybe they call it a 'turnover' and I just missed it. I kind of think I'd remember it, though, because a 'turnover' in US sporting lingo means 'losing the ball to the other team', and it would have stood out. 'Takeover' works. That play is used in basketball quite a bit and is called a "handoff" because there is usually little or no space between passer and receiver. Usually the two players involved are moving in opposite directions, i.e. two guards at the top of the key, but sometimes the passer is stationary.
Since I began watching a lot of soccer in the 90s with English commentators, at first mostly in pubs frequented by British ex-pats, and then in Europe while living there, I've taken to using all those English terms myself half the time without even thinking about it. A 1-0 score in soccer to me is almost always verbally "one-nil" and has been for years. But if I'm talking baseball with an America, I don't refer to a 1-0 score as "one-nil," it's "one-zero, or "one-to-nothing," nor do I refer to a uniform as a kit, or a field as a pitch, because the connotation's different. And frankly, if somebody finds my speech snobbish or annoying, guess just how much of a crap I'd give. That said, I refer to the game as "soccer," not "football," when talking to other Americans. We have another game we call football and there's no reason to be deliberately confusing.
I've never head anyone English call such a move a turnover. That's always been as you say, losing the ball to the other team. The nearest expression I can think of to describe that play would be a "one-two", although I have heard something possibly similar called a wall pass, dating back historically to playing in alleyways as kids, where you could beat a defender by passing to the wall beside him and running on to take the rebound.
During the Sat. night broadcast of the DC United game (I saw the replay later; was at the stadium live), John Harkes described the DCU defense as being "all sixes and sevens" when they allowed a Columbus goal. I'm sure some people in this thread would be very upset about that.
"All at sixes and sevens" is an expression that I've heard for years (although only on rare occasions), but I never realized it was British. I thought it was just archaic. Could it be that it was something that was part of both American English and British English, but has fallen out of use over here.
I've gotten used to Harkes saying things that make little sense to me. At least this time it was just a Britishism ( I have no idea if that is a word but I'm using it anyway).