当地时间12月3日，荷兰队在卡塔尔世界杯八分之一决赛中以3:1击败美国队，成为第一支晋级八强的球队。两传一射的邓弗里斯成为荷兰队晋级的最大功臣。

Right back Denzel Dumfries gave a stunning performance as the Netherlands became the first team to qualify for the quarterfinals of the World Cup with a 3-1 win over the USA on Saturday.

相比于赛场上的精彩进球，荷兰首相马特·吕特的线上“整活儿”同样有趣。
 

“football赢了”
 

据政客欧洲网站报道，在荷兰队赢得比赛后，吕特在推特上转发了美国总统乔·拜登的一条推文，并写道：
 

“对不起，乔（拜登），football赢了。”

“Sorry Joe, football won.”

That was Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s jocular shot at U.S. President Joe Biden on Saturday night, after the Netherlands dumped America out of the World Cup in Qatar.
 

*jocular：打趣的；逗乐的（funny or intended to make someone laugh）
 

吕特开玩笑转发的内容，是拜登在赛前录制的一条给美国队加油的视频。

Rutte was pulling Biden’s leg after the U.S. leader filmed a pre-match clip on Twitter.
 

*pull someone's leg：开玩笑，试图说服某人相信某事不是真的（to try to persuade someone to believe something that is not true, as a joke）
 

视频开头，美国队队员泰勒·亚当斯正在颠球。他说道：“嗨，总统先生，注意啦！”然后，身在多哈训练场地的他一个大脚，将球“踢”给了远在白宫的拜登。

In a video posted on Twitter before the game, USA star Tyler Adams is seen doing keepie uppies. “Hey Mr President, heads up!” the Leeds man says from a stadium in Doha, before ‘kicking’ the ball to Biden, who appears with a ball between his hands in the White House gardens.
 

镜头一转，双手接球的拜登出现了，他随即说道：“这叫soccer！”并给美国队加油助威。

“It’s called soccer!” Biden says to the camera with the ball between he hands. “Go USA. You guys can do it.”
 

政客欧洲网站称，对拜登而言，美国队被淘汰出局，也让“soccer”在世界杯上露脸的机会微乎其微。

Unfortunately for Biden, at this point “soccer” has a snowball’s chance in Qatar of catching on around the world.
 

面对马特的玩笑，拜登也幽默回应：严格来说，不应该是voetbal（荷兰语足球）吗？此外，他祝贺荷兰队取得胜利，并且放言美国女足将在2023年新西兰女足世界杯上和荷兰队再过招。

就在美国队被淘汰出局后，阿根廷队也战胜澳大利亚队晋级，ESPN足球网的推特写道，对于soccer来说真是艰难的一天。
 

巧合的是，长期以来，澳大利亚也和美国相仿，习惯使用soccer表述足球，而非football。作为现代足球发源地的英国，现在使用football表述足球。
 

澳大利亚足球队的的昵称就叫socceroos，是将soccer和该国特色代表袋鼠（kangaroo）的拼写组合在一起。

 

澳大利亚新闻网此前报道，如今越来越多的主流媒体开始使用football，soccer则被看作了过去式。
 

美国人叫soccer？“锅”是英国的
 

正如政客欧洲网站所言，到底是football还是soccer，几十年来令大西洋两边争论不休，然而在美国常用的soccer一词，实际上源于19世纪的英格兰。

Whether to call it “football” or “soccer” has stoked transatlantic divisions for decades — even though the word soccer actually originated in 19th-century England.
 

商业内幕网：美国人把足球叫soccer的真正原因，都是英格兰的错！

商业内幕网写道，根据2014年密歇根大学教授斯泽曼斯基的论文，soccer实际上也是英国人的发明，但是在大约40多年前大家才不用这个词了。

The word "soccer" is a British invention that British people stopped using only around 40 years ago, according to a 2014 paper by University of Michigan professor Stefan Szymanski.
 

文章介绍，19世纪初，英格兰的大学开始兴起football这项运动，但是大家规则并不相同。彼时rugby football的名字也同时存在，只不过可以用手来比赛，被视为相同运动的不同变种。

In the early 1800s, a bunch of British universities took "football" — a medieval game — and started playing their own versions of it, all under different rules. In the early 1800s in England, football and rugby existed as different variations of the same game. One variant of the game you played with your hands became "rugby football."
 

1863年，为了统一football运动的规则，名为足球协会（Football Association）的组织成立了，足球运动也被称为“协会足球（association football）”。到了1871年，另一个名为橄榄球足球联盟（Rugby Football Union）的组织也成立了。这两项运动正式命名为英式橄榄球（Rugby Football）和英式足球（Association Football）。

But in 1863, the Football Association was formed to codify the rules of football so that aristocratic boys from different schools could play against one another. In 1871, the Rugby Football Union followed suit. The two sports officially became known as Rugby Football and Association Football.
 

Rugby footbal被简称为rugger，再然后简化成了rugby。Association football则从拗口的assoc.逐渐衍变为socca，最后成为了soccer。文章援引1905年的《纽约时报》刊登的读者来信称，当时大家流行在词尾加上er的后缀，如foot-er, sport-er，因为Association不容易使用‘er’，所以有时被称为Soccer。可以看出，当时soccer还可以写作socker。

"Rugby football" became "rugger" for short, then "rugby". "Association football" became "soccer." "Soccer" is a corruption of the shortened form of Association, "assoc.". To support this argument, he cites a letter to The New York Times, published in 1905: “It was a fad at Oxford and Cambridge to use “er” at the end of many words, such as foot-er, sport-er, and as Association did not take an “er” easily, it was, and is, sometimes spoken of as Soccer.”
 

而当20世纪初，这两种运动漂洋过海到美国后，美国人再次自己做出了发明改造，形成了自己的“football运动”。

After these two sports spread across the Atlantic, Americans invented their own variant of the game that they simply called "football" in the early 1900s.

 

而soccer一词，根据斯泽曼斯基收集的出版物显示，20世纪上半叶时还在英格兰广泛应用。二战后，随着美国在英士兵人数的增加以及美国文化的冲击，soccer一词更加流行。

And the term soccer, Szymanski says, was widely recognized in England through the first half of the twentieth century, according to data he crunched from books and newspapers. It became even more prevalent after the World War II — driven, he suggests, by the number of American soldiers in the country and the infatuation with American culture that came after the war.
 

但是到了上世纪80年代，英国人开始反对这个词了。斯泽曼斯基写道，这项运动在美国文化中的渗透，导致英国人不愿使用soccer一词，虽然原先在英国soccer只是football一词的替代品。

But by the 1980s, Brits started to turn against the word. “The penetration of the game into American culture,” Szymanski writes, “has led to backlash against the use of the word in Britain, where it was once considered an innocuous alternative to the word ‘football.'”
 

世界杯的比赛临近尾声，但是显然对于足球运动英文名字的争论，远不会停歇。

The World Cup draws to a close, but the argument over the name of the sport it celebrates certainly won’t.
 

综合来源：政客欧洲网站，time，观察者网，商业内幕网，Time