Freddy Duarte

Soccer

Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal/Manchester United) just won the the Golden Ball, an award of great prestige in the Soccer world. Last season, Cristiano Ronaldo was considered the best player playing in the English Championship (which is the best soccer league in the planet, and by planet I really do mean planet, not like the “World Series”…). He won the English Championship with Manchester United and later won the European Champions League. This kid makes me proud!

1. Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal, Manchester Utd), 446 pontos
2. Lionel Messi (Argentina, Barcelona), 281 pts
3. Fernando Torres (Espanha, Liverpool), 179 pts
4. Iker Casillas (Espanha, Real Madrid), 133 pts
5. Xavi Hernandez (Espanha, Barcelona), 97 pts
6. Andreï Archavine (Russia, Zenit St. Petersburgo), 64 pts
7. David Villa (Espanha, Valência), 55 pts
8. Kaka (Brasil, Milan), 31 pts
9. Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Suécia, Inter), 30 pts
10 Steven Gerrard (Inglaterra, Liverpool), 28 pts

Soccer

Football

(…)The open-air game, first recorded 1409; forbidden in a Scottish statute of 1424. The first reference to the ball itself is 1486. Figurative sense of “something idly kicked around” is first recorded 1532. Ball-kicking games date back to the Roman legions, at least, but the sport seems to have risen to a national obsession in England, c.1630. Rules first regularized at Cambridge, 1848; soccer (q.v.) split off in 1863. The U.S. style (known to some in England as “stop-start rugby with padding”) evolved gradually 19c.; the first true collegiate game is considered to have been played Nov. 6, 1869, between Princeton and Rutgers, at Rutgers, but the rules there were more like soccer. A rematch at Princeton Nov. 13, with the home team’s rules, was true U.S. football. The earliest recorded application of the word football to this is from 1881.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper

Soccer