More and More Dutch Everyday

I’m sitting here on a Friday night watching Holland playing Ivory Coast in the World Cup (which we won!) and I decide to check out Flickr, where I’ve recently posted some Oranje photos like the football newbiefan that I am… and this message was waiting:

Hi,

Is it not soccer that you are celebrating with the orange??

Is it not soccer that everyone is talking about right now because of the world cup games?

Why do you call it football when it is called soccer all over the world?

Football is played at another time and the Big Game is at another time of the year.

If you say football to please the North Americans in Flickr, know that soccer IS played in North America, apart from football. It is NOT the same as football and North American football fans (I am Canadian but not a fan of any game) will be appauled that you say football when you mean soccer! Soccer fans will be appauled that you mix up the two!

Why not just say soccer when you mean soccer? I do not quite understand why you say football.

This will confuse people. I am confused.

******** (Name withheld to protect the ignorant)

The thing was it was ME who was appauled!! Like the semi-dutchie I am I scoffed and quickly wrote back explaining that in most of the world it is called FOOTBALL, not soccer, and pointed her to the Fifa Website. I don’t know if the woman wrote to me to try to help or to scold me for my lack of knowledge of all things North American but in either case she was oblivious to the fact that she really had no idea what she was talking about. Granted, she is right, most North Americans don’t have a clue that apart from their on their own continent that soccer is more widly known as football.

So confusing, who’s side am I on here? I understand the ignorance, yet I’m irritated by how North Americans often can’t see any further than the end of their own nose.

That’s what I get for being a hybrid!