Inaugural Address

Dear Reader,

The purpose of this blog is simple: to draw attention to FIFA’s alarming grammatical woes. One of the largest sports organizations on the planet, FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) is the football (soccer for you Americans) world’s governing body. It seems, however, that this reputable sports behemoth is suffering from a case of the English-language grammatical blues; the content posted on their website (again, in English – they offer the site in six languages, the other five of which we hope fare better syntactically than their English counterpart) is embarrassingly ill-grammatical, especially for such a prominent association, especially in such a banner year for said association (by which we of course refer to the 2010 FIFA World Cup, set to take place in South Africa). What we hope to do, via “FIFA’s Grammatical Woes”, is draw attention to this sad editorial deficit. As avid football fans (collectively we have agreed upon London’s West Ham United and Mexico City’s Club America as our top clubs), avaricious readers, and ardent grammar fascists, it sows our souls with great melancholy to bear witness to FIFA’s blatant reinforcement of the age-old stereotype that those who sport cannot spell. Please, join our Facebook group (FIFA’s Grammatical Woes), frequent our blog (which will be updated five days a week, all posts being edited articles/profiles/written pieces from FIFA’s site), and sign our petition to fix what we hope is only a temporal editorial folly.

The format of the blog will be as follows: First, our edited/tweeked/spruced/altered version of the article of the day will appear, with changes emboldened. Second, the original FIFA.com article will appear, for you reading and/or comparing pleasure. And that’s the gist. So, we’re off to the races!

Most Sincerely,

the F.G.W. Team