Educational?

Football can be educative. Having learn, play and watch football since I was 8 taught me alot actually. It even came as a surprise to me considering it was meant to be an entertainment, a recreational sports that me, my dad and my friends share as a common topic. Unknowingly, I found out that it taught me alot more than that.

1) Geography

Having watch football regularly over the years, the EPL, the Euro Cup and the World Cup, it gave me more in terms of recognising countries and their respective flags! Came to know of it when I was playing the Geography game on Facebook, where the players are suppose to match flags to countries, geographical location to landmark names etc...I never knew I know much about the country flags of 'less popular' places, like Belarus, Croatia, Hungary, Angola, Ivory Coast and so on, mainly around the eastern europe to african region :O

2) Names

When people come up with a name like Van Den Berg, taking a rough guess, you would probably go for Holland/Netherland (I don't know why they are called Dutch when their country is either Holland or Netherland). But where did this rough guess came from? Must be football? With all those Van Nistelrooy, Van Persie, Van Der Meyde and more Vans.

Also recently I went for my driving test and the instructor's name was Toula Dikeliotis? My wild guess? Greek. And Greek she was. It has to be because of football again, with weird and fancy names (for me at least) like Nikopolidis, Giannakopoulos. Well of course they can be Australian with a Greek descendant as well.

3) Culture

While not much about the main culture of each country, but the culture of their football. Russia, Serbia, Slovakia and those around that region always make good defenders. Tough as tank. I wonder why. While South Americans tend to be short, fast, techically-superior and unsporting, lol. This can be relate to culture perhaps.


So you see, football can be educative. :O