Soccer Powerhouse Italy Copes With The 'Indelible Stain' Of Missing The World Cup - by Colin Dwyer

This is the way World Cup hopes end — not with a bang, but with a whimper.

With their tournament dreams on the line against Sweden on Monday night, the Italian men's national team — the four-time World Cup champion Italian men's national team — simply could not get the win they needed. They didn't even demonstrate the knack for tragedy that might have made for a dramatic defeat, à la the U.S. men.

Instead, Italians watched their opportunity to play in the 2018 World Cup wither slowly as the scoreboard stayed empty, drifting to a scoreless tie with the Swedes in Milan. With the 0-0 draw, Sweden booked their own ticket to Russia to play in one of the world's most watched events.

Not since 1958 has the World Cup lacked an Italian team.

Luckily, though, it appears Italians are taking it in stride: "Italy, this is the apocalypse," declared the Italian sports publication La Gazzetta dello Sport.

Read more: Powerhouse Italy Copes With The 'Indelible Stain' Of Missing The World Cup : The Two-Way : NPR

The Super Bowl seen through the eyes of a European Soccer fan - by RM

American football -the Super Bowl is here again on Sunday, February 1, 2015

As a "foreigner" It's Interesting watching the news here in the US. For more than 10 days now we have been "pummeled" non-stop with news about a deflated football and its effect on the "Super Bowl" - for the uninformed this is the final game of an American football competition between 4 divisions around America.

For some outsiders American Football looks like Rugby except for the fact that its not about great athletics, but rather about a heavily padded group of guys who keep running into each other for about 3 hours until the least exhausted and battered team wins. 

The winning team is called "the World Football Champion" - world hmm ? For those outside the US who consider "the other football" - called soccer in America - as the real thing, it seems ridiculous. But hey, this is America, the world,s number 1 Superpower 

They are "the boss" when it comes to calling the shots around the world, at least for now. Anyway, I will be watching "the Seattle Seahawks" playing the "Boston Patriots" this Sunday", with my special interest focused on the usually spectacular half-time variety show - and may the best team win.

EU-Digest 

Football: Why Americans Call Soccer 'Soccer' - by Uri Friedman

New Zealand's largest newspaper is deeply conflicted. With the World Cup underway in Brazil, should The New Zealand Herald refer to the "global round-ball game" as "soccer" or "football"? The question has been put to readers, and the readers have spoken. It's "football"—by a wide margin.

We in the U.S., of course, would disagree. And now we have a clearer understanding of why. In May, Stefan Szymanski, a sports economist at the University of Michigan, published a paper debunking the notion that "soccer" is a semantically bizarre American invention. In fact, it's a British import. And the Brits used it often—until, that is, it became too much of an Americanism for British English to bear.

The story begins, like many good stories do, in a pub. As early as the Middle Ages, Szymanski explains, the rough outlines of soccer—a game, a ball, feet—appear to have been present in England. But it wasn't until the sport became popular among aristocratic boys at schools like Eton and Rugby in the nineteenth century that these young men tried to standardize play. On a Monday evening in October 1863, the leaders of a dozen clubs met at the Freemasons' Tavern in London to establish "a definite code of rules for the regulation of the game.”

They did just that, forming the Football Association. The most divisive issue was whether to permit "hacking," or kicking an opponent in the leg (the answer, ultimately, was 'no').

Read more: Why Americans Call Soccer 'Soccer' - Uri Friedman - The Atlantic