@MCLegoboy said:
"7-12? That's a high scoring game for soccer!"
What’s soccer?

@HandPositions said:
" @MCLegoboy said:
"7-12? That's a high scoring game for soccer!"
What’s soccer?"

7-12 is the (suggested, as "The Man Upstairs" says) age range, and soccer is a game using your foot, also known as football, though Americans call it soccer for reasons. Even though some get the two confused (like in an episode of Phineas and Ferb, Buford is in a American football uniform, while the others are in correct attire.)

Episode: https://phineasandferb.fandom.com/wiki/My_Fair_Goalie

I have the more “basic” version of this set, and I started assembling it when it was new and never quite finished. I should take care of that.

I was thinking two soccer sets in one week was highly suspicious, considering that’s more than the number of people I know who like soccer, but then I realized the “other soccer set” was actually a basketball set and someone just dragged soccer into the conversation.

@MCLegoboy said:
" @HandPositions said:
" @MCLegoboy said:
"7-12? That's a high scoring game for soccer!"
What’s soccer?"
That better be ironic because your location is listed next to your name, you're not fooling
anyone."
As a dedicated introvert, I do not follow sports.

@Slithus_Venom said:
" @HandPositions said:
" @MCLegoboy said:
" @HandPositions said:
" @MCLegoboy said:
"7-12? That's a high scoring game for soccer!"
What’s soccer?"
That better be ironic because your location is listed next to your name, you're not fooling
anyone."
As a dedicated introvert, I do not follow sports."
What is "sports"?"
According to Oxford, a sport is an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.

Too bad this came too late for France this EK :-p
But in the good (and still relevant) news section, I've just received a box of pieces which has at least some of the flags used to mark the score in 3569 Grand Soccer Stadium, though I have to check just how much is there. Never knew this set even existed!

Wow…
I have the standard 3420 (£5 off eBay a few years ago- an absolute steal!)
But I never knew that there were different country variants of the set!

These worked surprisingly well, and very fun to play.

@PurpleDave said:
" @Isabella_and_Lego_Liker:
The funny thing is, the _one_ time we adopt the British term, everyone gives us grief for doing so."

American's don't know it, simply because they suck at it...

Excellent timing, Huwbot. At least they'll always have Paris...

Ah, nothing like some good old ridiculing the French.

(Coming from a German, whose team is also out ;-)

Clearly unsuitable for kids, it provokes violence!

As lynels alluded to the French were unlucky to lose on penalties on Monday, usually an English thing. But at least they can replay Euro 1998 and 2000 World Cup wins with this version of 3420 which was only available in France, although they just seemed to have changed the mini-fig tops.

@BelgianBricker:
Kicking a Ball and Pretending to Be Hurt? Yeah, not really our thing...

@sjr60 said:
" @HandPositions said:
" @MCLegoboy said:
"7-12? That's a high scoring game for soccer!"
What’s soccer?"
Apparently it's some strange ritual that was invented many years ago to entertain unfortunate folks who find putting Lego bricks together just too challenging for them to master."

Actually it's called 'Football' (voetbal, fusball, ...) but not as you may know it (being American).

@PurpleDave said:
" @BelgianBricker:
Kicking a Ball and Pretending to Be Hurt? Yeah, not really our thing..."

No, you guys are more into calling something "football" that involves running around like headless chickens with an oversized egg in your hands...

I’ve had both this version and the regular version in my collection for many years, despite living in the UK. I’m not entirely sure how.

@cody6268 said:
"What has always surprised me (and I've considered it kinda funny too) how these soccer sets reused all kinds of minifig prints done in sets a few years before the line came out, even "known" characters like Johnny Thunder appeared! "
Don't forget that Sparks, of Rock Raiders fame, apparently cloned himself so he could be the goalkeeper for *every team simultaneously* during 2001/2002, including the ones who were competing directly against each other!

I had the smaller 3421, 3 vs. 3 Shootout, which was quite enough football action for non-sporty me xD I used to replace the players with characters from various other Lego themes, à la the Football / Soccer Mania video game (5784), when I played the set with anyone, because I found that more interesting than generic football players. Let's see you beat my team of Jedi on the football field, instead!

I seem to recall that 'soccer' is an abbreviation of 'As soc i a tion Football' which is a game played with your feet, unlike football which is a game played with your hands - in a similar way a bathroom is visited to use the toilet and don't even go there with the spelling of aluminium...

@BelgianBricker:
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt4738944/?ref_=m_ttep_ep_ep41

Teen Titans Go!, episode 2.14.

And as I’ve alluded to previously, football in the US is more akin to unarmed combat than sport. There have been linebackers who specialized in putting key players in the hospital, if the coach decided that was necessary to win the game.

@danieltheo:
It is, and you Brits came up with it, because there were actually _three_ games called “football” back then.

As for the other part, I’ve done stagecraft, so I’m already used to back being up, front being down, up being out, down being in, left being right, and right being left.

@BelgianBricker said:
" @PurpleDave said:
" @Isabella_and_Lego_Liker:
The funny thing is, the _one_ time we adopt the British term, everyone gives us grief for doing so."

American's don't know it, simply because they suck at it..."

How many World Cups has the American Women's team won? Or do sports only count if played by men?

@guachi:
The reason for that is Title IV. Schools are required by law to give girls as much opportunity to play sports as boys. Soccer’s cheap, and so are basketball and softball. Football has tons of armor that you have to wear, so it’s a lot more expensive. To balance out sports like football, you see a lot of schools offering girls volleyball, but not boys volleyball, or some schools tried to take the system by turning cheerleading into a competitive sport for girls (because you were going to have an all/mostly female cheer squad for boys football and basketball). But to keep things balanced, any affordable sport that boys play is generally offered to girls as well, just to maximize he use of the venue.

So, girls all over the US were suddenly able to try out for sports like soccer, basketball, and softball, and they got pretty good at all three. Good enough that they were able to develop some top talent. In the rest of the world, where there is no Title IV equivalent, this didn’t happen. In fact, in most of the soccer-playing world, they don’t care about womens’ sports at all (in some soccer countries, they don’t care much for women in general). So, when NOCs pull together teams to send to the Olympics, it was like pitting high school students against the latest champions of a pro league.

There’s been some movement on this. Other nations have apparently started to put more resources and effort into developing girls sports programs, which means that things have been getting more competitive at the top level. I think the US team even got knocked out of the Olympic semifinals match in at least one of those three sports recently, where in the 80’s and 90’s gold medals were pretty much a foregone conclusion. The upside to that is it makes the entire sport healthier. Baseball and softball got dropped from the Olympics because the US tended to steamroll the silver medal team in the final match. If even the final match is that lopsided, it makes that sport an easy target for elimination so they can add a more competitive sport in its place (the Olympics has limits on how many sports can be contested in each Games, with a smaller number for winter than summer).

@PurpleDave said:
"The funny thing is, the _one_ time we adopt the British term, everyone gives us grief for doing so."
It's hardly the only time. Numerous language features that are perceived as "Americanisms"—soccer, aluminum, gotten, apartment, fall, sidewalk, -ize, -or, the American accent itself—originated in Britain.

The accent is probably the most surprising one. According to linguists, the General American accent sounds much the same as Shakespeare did, having been imported directly from 17th-century Britain and preserved like a time capsule. British pronunciation is largely an invention of the 19th century. But Americans didn't just keep the accent, they also preserved other vocabulary and grammatical conventions from 1600s Britain which have been forgotten in the motherland.

The existence of this set fascinates me, because Soccer is most definitely not one of the themes in the various databases I've delved into--and I had the garden variety one. It's also an interesting pre-fleshtones "real world people" sort of set.

@T79 said:
"Too bad this came too late for France this EK :-p"

EK? Is that an abbreviation of a localized name? ;P