What do Europeans Know About Canadian Football?
Football is a sport with a very long history – long enough, in fact, for its true origins not even be recorded. Kicking the ball has been “invented” in several parts of the world separately. Documents from ancient China and Japan mention a game that involves an object being kicked, games involving objects and feet were played in ancient Greece and Rome… but all forms of modern-day football can be traced back to England. Yes, all forms – association football (aka soccer) and Canadian football alike. The former was born at the University of Cambridge, while the latter can be traced back to Rugby, Warwickshire, the birthplace of rugby football, the sport that is at the origins of Canadian football. Canadian football is a sport with distant European origins and this leads to a question: what do Europeans actually know about it – or any other form of football other than their own? Well, you don’t need to be up-to-date with the latest sports science news to guess the answer: pretty much nothing.
The land of soccer
When it comes to sports played with oval-shaped balls, the knowledge of most European sports fans stops at American football (the NFL is famous enough to have fans on the other side of the Atlantic) and rugby. The knowledge of most European sports fans about these is pretty sketchy as well – many of them don’t even distinguish between Rugby Union and Rugby League. And there are a great many of them who haven’t heard of Canadian football in their lives.
The reason for this is most likely the long-time dominance of soccer, considered the “national sport” of many countries in Europe and beyond. Soccer is the most followed sport in Europe. Each country has countless teams competing not only in said country’s local league but in pan-European ones and global ones as well. The FIFA World Cup – the most prestigious soccer event in the world, held every four years, that is almost as revered as the Olympics.
Soccer is insanely popular in Europe, with millions of fans (as in fanatics) organized in official clubs, sometimes violently clashing in the streets.
The NFL steals the show
Another reason why most European sports fans probably haven’t heard of CFL is the fact that the NFL steals the show. Most of them probably presume that football works in a way similar to ice hockey – the NHL is played by both Canadian and US teams. The NFL is covered by pretty much every major sports channel and its matches can be bet on at all major (and most minor) bookmakers, which puts it in front of millions of people all over the world.
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