When we refer to teams, if we're using the city name, we use the singular ("Portland is killing the Lakers tonight!), but if we use the team nickname, we use the plural ("The Lakers are just throwing up bricks"), even if the nickname itself is singular ("The Jazz are hitting more in this quarter than the Heat have hit all game"). Yet when it comes to Euro soccer, I've noticed they only refer to the city names, and they always go plural ("Chelsea have beaten ManU"; "Real Madrid are 7 points up on Barca"). It's that unique to soccer, or is that how they comment on hoops over there? Do they do this with MLS commentary as well? Is there a divide between how American and European analysts speak about teams? Are there any analysts for NFL/NBA/MLB that do this? And what about hockey? Anyway... that was a random thought of mine this morning, so I figured there was no better place to post it than this thread.
