Trying to make peace with a pet peeve: Soccer fans who say ‘two-nil’

I am a somewhat changed person.

If I hear someone describe a soccer score as “two-nil,” I am now capable of not immediately assuming that the person who said it is a silly poser.

I am not a soccer hater. I played the sport through high school. I still can’t walk past a soccer ball without trying to juggle it. I appreciate how a 1-0 game can be compelling theater.

But as American soccer followers’ sophistication has grown, I have found the adoption of the English soccer lexicon — i.e., calling uniforms “kits” and cleats “boots” — to be a little irritating.

It has struck me as an affectation, sort of like when Brian Kelly infamously tried to win over LSU fans by saying “family” with a fake Southern accent.

This is not the grievance of someone who can’t embrace other cultures. It’s more like a pet peeve of someone whose job revolves around sports and words.

It’s like the line from “Seinfeld” when Jerry confesses to a priest that he suspects his dentist has converted to Judaism “purely for the jokes.”

The priest asks Jerry if that offends him as a Jew and he responds, “No, it offends me as a comedian!”

This momentous World Cup summer, my radar has been set off many times.

When media were offered a visit to the new U.S. Soccer training center in Fayette County, I couldn’t help but notice that a space where players could leave their cleats was designated as the “boot room.”

Here, in the 250th anniversary of independence from England, in the inner sanctum of U.S. soccer, was nothing less than linguistic surrender.

Was Bunker Hill for nothing?

In World Cup coverage, hearing Fox broadcasters adopting the British style of referring to a country as a plural noun, as in “America are through to the round of 16,” has been like taking a cheese grater to my ear drums.

What’s next?

Fox broadcaster: “Before arriving at the stadium, Christian Pulisic started his day by leaving his flat and driving 3 kilometers on the motorway to buy some crisps and biscuits that were full of flavour.”

But a couple of things happened. The first was a phone conversation. Looking for someone to help me make my point with all the authority of a Harry Kane penalty kick, I got in touch with British sports writer Thom Gibbs, senior sports writer for The Daily Telegraph in London.

My suspicion was that, when British NFL followers talk about the score of a game, they don’t say “10-zero” or “10-nothing” but instead their accustomed “10-nil.”

Which would be to say, why are we changing our jargon if the British keep theirs?

“It’d be really interesting to survey people on this,” Gibbs said. “I think if you’ve been watching the NFL for any amount of time, you would say ‘nothing’ or ‘zero’ in that context. I think if you were coming to it new and it was your first game, you would say ‘nil.’ It’s funny, isn’t it?”

If by funny he meant “smashing my column idea with a croquet mallet,” then, yes, it was indeed hilarious.

My new friend added that, in referring to an NFL playing surface, only a newcomer fan “would say ‘pitch’ and not realize that’s a bit of an error technically.”

I can’t hear you, Thom. You’re breaking up on me.

Gibbs framed it as a sign of respect and politeness more than pretense, and that changed how I saw this alteration.

A second shift in perspective came from my own keyboard. Rather than call the World Cup’s elimination rounds what we would normally call such games — “playoffs” — I have used what the British call it: the “knockout stage.”

I didn’t give it much thought. It’s the term that’s commonly used and I didn’t want to look like a stick in the mud.

Color me a fraction more enlightened.

The call with Gibbs was fascinating to me. Among other things, I learned from him that British sports fans don’t use “winningest” (“so overtly American”) or describe players with a skill for scoring as “weapons.” The latter, Gibbs said, is “equivalent to calling someone a wally, basically.”

(If you must ask, as I did, a wally is “a bit of a fool,” Gibbs said.)

But both of us draw a hard line at one adaptation. Americans don’t need to refer to a country as a plural. Gibbs reported that British fans stick to their native practice even when talking about NFL teams (“You’d say ‘Pittsburgh are my favorite team,’ for sure.”) and to do otherwise “would be British fans trying too hard to sound American.”