Hello everybody and welcome to soccer 101. My name is Taylor Rockwell, and on this episode,

we're going to be exploring how and why some football or soccer clubs are called what they're called. Why are there so

many rovers in England, Sparta's in Europe, and Greek gods pretty much everywhere in the

world? We're going to try to find some answers. A bit of backstory to this episode. The idea for

it came about after a recent conversation I had with my wife. I had a Premier League game on TV.

She walked into the room, stared at it for a couple minutes, and then said, who are the baggies? It says baggies in the stands. My response was, oh, that's a nickname for West Brum. She sort of nodded and then was like, why are they the baggies? And to that I had no answer. It's one of those things that if you sort of grow up in the area, I'm assuming you know.

If you are American and you just learn to watch the Premier League from abroad, it just becomes what they're called. But maybe you didn't think about why they're called that. I also find West Brom doubly confusing since they're West Bromwich Albion FC, and I also had no idea what Albion meant. A quick Google search led me to an article about team names, and many, many hours later,

here we are.

So, let's get into some of the more prominent club names and nicknames that may have been causing

you, dear sweet listeners, consternation of your own.

Let's start in the UK and take a look at some of the more ubiquitous names.

In England's top five leagues,

there are a total of 17 towns, including Huddersfield, Swindon, and Crawley. There are 15 United's and

14 cities. So we've got towns, we've got cities. You can even go more local if you want. Just ask

Knott's County. United traditionally implies that a club was the result of a merger between two distinct

organizations, though that's not the case for both Manchester and D.C. United. It was for Newcastle United

when in 1892 Newcastle East End and Newcastle West End decided to end their rivalry. If only

Tupac and Biggie had been fans of soccer history, they would have been able to solve that East-West feud.

Side note, the Arabic version of United would be Ittihad, which translates to the Union.

There are Al-Itihad in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and Libya. So Itihad United, kind of the same thing.

Back to England, another somewhat common name in the UK is athletic, such as

Charlton Wigan and Oldham in England, Dunfermline in Scotland, and Rexham in Wales. The name

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