Why is it so popular? I think because it is a very simple team game. Everyone can get the idea in a few seconds. It is a pure hunting game. 2 teams are hunting a little bunny - eehh - ball.

I personally do not care about this international fever at all. I rather do sports on my own than watching some way overpaid guys at television.

Regarding the term soccer:

From Wikipedia.com:
Quote:
The term soccer originated in England, first appearing in the 1880s as an Oxford "-er" abbreviation of the word "association",[5] often credited to former England captain Charles Wreford-Brown.[6] Clive Toye noted that even English people called the game "soccer" interchangably with "football" until the second half of the 20th century. "A quirk of British culture is the permanent need to familiarize names by shortening them. ... Toye [said] 'They took the third, fourth and fifth letters of Association and called it SOCcer.'”[7]


Here from a English-German dictionary:
http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&lan...p;search=soccer

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