Watching the World Cup recently has prompted me to ask: Why do the announcers refer to teams as if they are plural? For instance, “England are on the attack.” I think it should be “England is on the attack,” as we are referring to the English team which is a single unit and therefore singular?
Team names — singular or plural
July 20th, 2010 by mike
4 Responses to “Team names — singular or plural”
Leave a Reply
Teaching English to Preschoolers with iPhones
We (i.e. the creators of Pain in The English) developed a series of iPhone apps to teach preschool kids how to recognize letters and words. (My wife developed the characters and I did the coding.) Our own 4-year old daughter has been enjoying them. They are now available on Apple's App Store. You can search for "bitskis" on your iPhone, or visit the official website at bitskis.com.
If you have kids and own an iPhone, please check it out. It's $2.
Maybe this can be helpful: http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/collectivenoun.htm
The link above is somewhat helpful, but doesn’t address the question specifically. In the UK (and other English-speaking countries outside North America), just about all collective nouns (e.g., team, or the name of a team, such as “England”) take plural verbs. Hence, “England were playing generally lousy football.” If you listen to Versus Network’s Tour de France coverage, you’ll hear things such as “The Radio Shack team are led by Lance Armstrong,” since the announcers are again British.
I agree with Steve – Kestrel Aerie. I started watching more soccer/football this year, and it really perplexed me to hear constantly the singular team names followed by plural verbs. Last night I watched on TV a match played in Boston’s Fenway Park (between Celtic F.C. of Glasgow and Sporting C.P. of Lisbon), and I believe the two American announcers always used singular verbs with the club names (Celtic and Sporting). But then a very good source notes that although in the US singular verbs are commonly used with team place names (Boston, New York, Colorado), plural verbs are used with singular team names such as the (Miami) Heat and the (Utah) Jazz: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/plurals.htm#sports
And this Wikipedia article is pretty thorough on Brit vs US differences, including verbs used with collective nouns:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences
England on the attack” vs. “England are on the attack”.
I would say that “England are on the attack” refers to a team who’s players are on the attack. This is plural – hence “are”. To say “England on the attack” would infer the country of England as a whole was on the attack. England as a country is not on the attack, but a team of players representing England are on attack.
But, that is just my opinion…