In 24 years of FIFA World Cup competition, Canada's U-17 national soccer team has never won a match. They hadn't even played to a draw during a 13-match streak in which they'd been outscored 45-3.

Soccer just isn't very popular enough here for Canada to develop enough of a base to draw world class players from. the few we do have go to play in Europe - and it's very difficult for them to come home to play in international matches for us.[/url] probably have similar stats.

Soccer is also an afterthought in the States, but we still manage to field a competitive team. We also haven't had that much difficulty having our players abroad play in internationals.

Pretty cool...for soccer. If there were more plays like that I might actually watch the game. As it stands, it's way too boring.

Yes football and not soccer.

Those crazy kids at Oxford started calling it soccer back in 1863.

Those crazy kids at Oxford started calling it soccer back in 1863.

The Oxford "-er" or often "-ers", is a colloquial and sometimes facetious suffix prevalent at Oxford University from about 1875, which is thought to have been borrowed from the slang of Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire (where rugby was invented in the 19th Century). The term was defined by the New Zealand-born lexicographer Eric Partridge in his Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (several editions 1937–61).

Rugger, footer and soccer

The "-er" gave rise to such words as rugger for Rugby football, soccer (or the rarer togger)for Association football and the now archaic footer, which was used for either game (but more usually soccer).

The term "soccer", derived from a transformation/emendation of the "assoc" in Association football (the game's full name), was popularised by a prominent English footballer, Charles Wreford-Brown (1866–1951). The first recorded use of "soccer" was in 1895.

Two years earlier The Western Gazette reported that "W. Neilson was elected captain of ‘rugger’ and T. N. Perkins of ‘socker’" and Henry Watson Fowler recommended socker in preference to "soccer" to emphasise its correct pronunciation (i.e. hard "cc/ck"). In this context, he suggested that "baccy", because of the "cc" in "tobacco", was "more acceptable than soccer" (there being no "cc" in "Association").

The sports writer E. W. Swanton, who joined the London Evening Standard in 1927, recalled that "Rugby football ... in those days, I think, was never called anything but rugger unless it were just football". Around the same time the Conservative Minister Leo Amery noted that, for his thirteen year old son Jack (who was executed for treason in 1945), "footer in the rain [was] a very real grievance" at Harrow School.

Oxford "-ers" are also used on the BBC's radio coverage of the cricket.

The "-er" form was famously used on BBC radio's popular Test Match Special or TMS (1957-present) by Brian Johnston (1912–94), ex-Eton and New College, Oxford, who bestowed nicknames on his fellow commentators on test cricket: thus, Blowers for Henry Blofeld (who was known in Australia as "Blofly"), Aggers (Jonathan Agnew), Bearders (scorer Bill Frindall, known also as "the Bearded Wonder") and McGillers (Alan McGilvray of the ABC).

The habit extended to cricketers such as Phil Tufnell (Tuffers), but the '-ie' suffix is more common for the current crop of commentating ex-players, such as Michael Vaughan ("Vaughnie") or Shane Warne ("Warnie").

The former Hampshire County Cricket Club captain Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie, whose most usual nickname was McCrackers, was sometimes addressed as Ingers when he made occasional appearances on TMS and former Middlesex bowler and journalist Mike Selvey was referred to as Selvers. The programme's producer, Peter Baxter, cited Backers as his own nickname and Jenkers that of commentator and cricketing journalist, Christopher Martin-Jenkins (though the latter was better known by his initials, "CMJ").

Johnston himself was known as Johnners. Following his death in 1994, the satirical magazine Private Eye published a cartoon of Johnston arriving at the gates of heaven with the greeting "Morning, Godders". An earlier Eye cartoon by McLachlan, reproduced in the 2007 edition of Wisden (Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, often referred to simply as Wisden or colloquially as "the Bible of Cricket", is a cricket reference book published annually in the United Kingdom. It is considered the world's most famous sports reference book), included in its long caption a reference to former England bowler Fred Trueman as Fredders (in fact, his common nickname, bestowed by Johnston, was "Sir Frederick"), while yummers (i.e. "yummy") was applied to "another lovely cake sent in by one of our listeners".


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_%22-er%22