Jane: This is But Why, a Podcast for Curious Kids from Vermont
Public. I'm Jane Lindholm. On this show, we take questions
from curious kids all over the world, just like you, and we
find answers. As I'm recording this episode in mid-June of
2026, there's something really big happening here in the United
States and our neighbors, Canada and Mexico. And that is the FIFA
World Cup. The Men's World Cup happens every four years, and
there's a Women's World Cup that also happens at four year
intervals, where athletes representing different countries
compete against each other in a tournament of soccer... or
should we be calling it football? This year, the men's
tournament is happening across 16 North American cities,
bringing athletes and fans from all over the world, like this
young soccer fan and But Why listener who came to the US all
the way from Scotland to catch a game.
Alex: Hi everyone, my name is Alex, I'm seven years old and I
live in Glasgow, Scotland. I'm visiting Boston right now to
support Scotland at their first World Cup games in 28 years. Our
supporters are called the Tartan Army, and we've made lots of
friends in Boston so far. Because of this, Glasgow and
Boston are now twin cities.
Jane: It's true. The mayor of the city of Boston,
Massachusetts, and the Lord Provost of Glasgow, Scotland,
have started the process to become what are also often
called sister cities. The idea behind twin cities or sister
cities is to just help foster global peace and cultural
exchanges. Sounds pretty awesome. Now, some of you might
really like watching or playing soccer, but not everyone is
super into the sport or up on all of its lingo. So, this World
Cup season, we really wanted to find someone who knows the sport
inside and out, so we can learn all about soccer and the World
Cup, and we found that someone, her name is Meg Linehan, and
she's a sports reporter for a news outlet called The Athletic,
which is part of the New York Times. In fact, she's the
women's sports lead.
Meg Linehan: So I basically write about women's sports for a
living. So I've covered some World Cups for the women, I've
been to the Olympics, but basically I watch soccer, and
then I write things about it.
Jane: I mean, that sounds almost like a fake job. I get to watch
soccer, and then, no, I gotta write a little bit. It sounds
pretty awesome.
Meg Linehan: It is. I will say, for everyone saying it's a dream
job, the dream part is important, but the job part is
important. There's a lot of late nights, a lot of hecticness,
that it is a job still.
Jane: Right. Like, if you go to watch a soccer game, after the
game is over, you're either excited or sad, and then maybe
you get on the train, or you get in a car, or you walk home. You,
that's kind of when your job starts or continues after the
game ends.
Meg Linehan: Definitely, let's say a game ends at 8o'clock at
night. Sometimes I'm still working at 3o'clock in the
morning.
Jane: I mean, for those of us who wish that somebody would not
give us a bedtime, that might sound appealing, too.
Meg Linehan: That's fair. That's fair. I mean, bedtimes, I will
say in sports, if you want to work in sports, bedtimes are
very optional here.
Jane: Meg and I met up at the soccer stadium at the University
of Vermont, so we could watch a little soccer while we talked.
Members of the semi-professional Vermont Green FC were in the
middle of practice that morning, running drills, and at least
appearing to have a great time as they worked on improving
their dribbling, kicking, and goalkeeping skills in
preparation for their next game, it was pretty cool to sit down
right at field level and watch them play, especially since
their games are usually sold out and it's hard to get a ticket.
Meg and I figured we ought to start with some questions about
the World Cup, since so many of you are excited about the games
going on right now all across North America.
Ace: My name is Ace, I'm nine years old, and I'm from Denver,
Colorado. And my question is, when was the first World Cup?
Meg Linehan: So, the first Men's World Cup was played in 1930 in
Uruguay, in South America, and what was really interesting
about that is there's actually no qualification, right? Like,
right now teams have to fight to be in the World Cup. Only 13
teams showed up, only four made it over from Europe, but they
actually had to take boats from Europe to get to Uruguay for
this tournament. And Uruguay won the first one. They beat
Argentina. The US did go to this World Cup, and they finished
third. So historically, our best ever result was at the first
World Cup in 1930. Now the first Women's World Cup was 1991 but
it wasn't actually called that. It eventually became the Women's
World Cup by 1995.
Jane: And the Men's World Cup and the Women's World Cup are
not played at the same time.
Meg Linehan: Correct. So we're in a Men's World Cup right now
in the summer of 2026. The next Women's World Cup is going to be
in Brazil in 2027 but the US is planning on hosting the Women's
World Cup in 2031 along with Mexico, Jamaica, and Costa Rica.
Jane: Oh, so not quite the same setup as right now, where we
have Mexico, Canada, and the United States hosting the
current World Cup,
Meg Linehan: And that's because Canada actually already hosted
the Women's World Cup in 2015.
Jane: Cool, and right now, when we think about the World Cup,
can you describe just how big and all-encompassing it is? This
is a really huge deal across the world.
Meg Linehan: Right. And this is actually the first time that the
World Cup has been at 48 teams, so it's gotten even bigger,
right? So that first World Cup in 1930, only 13 teams, before
this, it used to be, you know, 32 but 24 you know, they build
it out, now we're at 48 teams, so it's, you know, 16 host
cities, it's 1000s and 1000s of people, and these stadiums, too,
are giant, so you think about all of the National Football
League stadiums that they're using, I mean, 80,000 people at
a game, right? So it's just, it is one of the biggest sporting
events in the world. It's right up there with the Olympics, for sure.
Jane: And I don't know if those of you who are listening are
watching the World Cup, but it's not just like get the stadiums
ready in terms of painting the lines so that it's for soccer
and getting people in the stadiums and getting the teams
ready. There are even people who have been working for years on
the grass to make sure the grass is perfect and that it seems the
same in every stadium. It's a huge endeavor that again, if you
think you want to go into professional sports, there are a
lot of different ways, you could even be a grass scientist and be
involved in professional soccer.
Meg Linehan: There's all of these positions that I think
people don't really understand the impact the very game itself.
It's not just writers up in the press box or camera people on
the sidelines, it is, you know, medical staff, it's the people
who grow the grass, it's all of these things for sure.
Orla: My name's Orla, and I'm five years old, and I live in
England, York. And my question is, How's the World Cup trophy
made?
Meg Linehan: So, there's actually only one World Cup
trophy. They don't make a trophy every winner of the World Cup,
there's one. It lives in Switzerland, in between the
tournaments. It was actually sculpted by an Italian in the
1970s. It is pure gold. It's worth over $700,000 and the real
fun trivia about the World Cup trophy is there used to be one
before, for the 1930s until like 1970s. It looked totally
different. It was stolen in Brazil in the 1980s. It's never
been found, so it's that's like one of the big soccer mysteries
of the modern age.
Jane: That's wild. And is there a different trophy for the
Women's World Cup and the Men's World Cup?
Meg Linehan: There are two different trophies. So, but
again, FIFA, who is the organizing body behind both
World Cups, keeps these trophies, so like they will take
them every once in a while out on tour, but if you're a player,
the only time you really ever get to hold it is when you're
winning it at that tournament. It's a very, you know, you think
about the Stanley Cup, right, where the hockley players get a
day with the trophy, and they'll put their baby in it, or they'll
put cereal in it. That's not happening with World Cup
trophies. Let me tell you.
Jane: That's kind of sad. I would imagine if I was maybe the
team captain, that I could keep it in my room and look at it
when I woke up for a few days, and then pass it on to somebody
else. But not so much.
Meg Linehan: Not so much.
Jane: Let's talk a little bit about the sport of soccer, and
some questions we've gotten, and one of the ones that we've
gotten again and again and again in the 10 plus years we've been
making this show is why is this sport called soccer in the
United States and Canada, and sometimes in other places, and
it's called football everywhere else.
MacKenzie: My name is Mackenzie, I'm 10 years old, and I live in
Massachusetts. And my question is, why is soccer called
football in other countries?
Ronin: Hi, my name is Ronin. I live in Massachusetts. I'm five
years old. Why do in America people call soccer soccer, and
in other countries they call it football.
Lucy: My name is Lucy. I'm seven years old. I live in Los
Angeles, California. And my question is, why do we call
soccer not football? Because we play it with our feet.
Meg Linehan: Okay, so soccer is actually a British term, and I
don't know if the Brits love to admit this. The thing is, it's
their word, and part of it stems from the fact that there were
actually two games that were happening in England at the
start of soccer, and it was rugby football, and soccer was
distinguished as association football. So, we don't actually
know how soccer formed as a word. We know it was some kids
in Oxford in the 1800s who took maybe the "soc" part out of
association, even though it doesn't sound like that, and
turned it into soccer, because...
Jane: And Oxford is a famous British university.
Meg Linehan: Yes, so because they also called rugby sometimes
rugger, right? So it was this sort of affectation of a word,
and so that you had rugger and soccer to distinguish the two
things, but what happened was this was a word that came over.
I mean, soccer's always been popular in the United States in
some form since the 1900s even before, because we had a whole
bunch of immigrants coming in who had played it, and so soccer
became the dominant word here, and then all of a sudden in the
modern era the Brits decided they didn't like it anymore,
Jane: Right. So we can blame the Brits for the word soccer, but
now the Brits want to call it football, which is fine, and the
rest of the world has, by and large, adopted football, which
is kind of an easier word to translate into different
languages as well.
Meg Linehan: Totally.
Jane: But then there is a game in the United States that we do
call football; other parts of the world would call it American
football. Francis in Fuquay-Varina , North Carolina,
wonders why we might call something like that football if
most of the time the players aren't kicking the ball at all.
Why not call it something more accurate, like handball, Francis
wonders. By the way, handball is already the name of another
sport, but here's how Meg suggests we think about it.
Meg Linehan: Don't think about necessarily playing it with your
feet, but it was actually to distinguish between something
like polo, which is played on horses, versus rugby or soccer,
which is played on foot, standing up on the ground, so
it's played on foot rather than with your feet, so football
technically you play standing up on the ground, that's all there
is to it.
Peyton: Well, my name is Peyton. I'm seven years old, and I live
in Minnesota. Who invented soccer?
Michael: I'm Michael from Brooklyn, New York. I'm six and
a half. My question is, how did soccer get created?
Meg Linehan: Humans have been kicking a ball, basically, as
long as we have had feet, and some sort of ball. I think in
China, really early days, they would fill something with
feathers and kick that around, so there's always been some form
of foot, ball, goal, right? It was not ever formalized as a
sport until the 1860s, 1870s in England, where again there was
this split between rugby football and association
football. So that's really where modern soccer, as we know it,
comes from, and that's also where rules like, hey, you can't
use your hands comes in because rugby football, obviously
they're using their hands all the time, but this was to
distinguish these two sports as two distinct branches of the
same origin.
Jane: Well, speaking of using your hands, it's not entirely
true that you can't use your hands in soccer. There's one
position on the field of play that can use their hands. You
can also, any player can use their hands to throw in the ball
when it's been out of bounds, but a goalie can use their
hands.
Elliot: My name is Elliot. I'm five years old, and I'm from
Flagstaff. And why do goalies only use hands while you're
playing soccer?
Jane: Why are goalies the only people who are allowed to use
their hands?
Meg Linehan: That's actually been in the rules since 1870 By
1871 they had really firmed that up. But goalkeepers get to use
their hands, basically, honestly, to keep things kind of
even, right? Soccer has never been known as a high scoring
sport, but if you didn't have goalkeepers, we would probably
be seeing score lines more like what we think about American
football, right, of 21 to 17, or whatever it is. So, goalkeepers,
because they're able to use their hands and catch the ball
out of the air, whatever it is, it helps keep the score a little
more even, and especially you think about penalty kick, right,
like the highest thing that's an attempt to make it where it's
not a guaranteed thing, you know.
Jane: A penalty kick is given when there's been a foul against
the team trying to score inside the penalty area, and one player
gets to take a shot at scoring with nobody but the opposing
team's goalkeeper defending the goal. Another time you might see
penalty kicks is if the two teams are tied at the very end
of the match, and then they have overtime and they're still tied.
Sometimes the game will end in a penalty shootout to determine
the winning team.
Meg Linehan: So it is very interesting, because also the
rules have changed for goalkeepers a lot since that
1870 decision of you can't use your hands. The only one that
can is a goalkeeper. It used to be like you could only touch it
for two seconds at a time and now, as of 2025 the rule is
goalkeepers can handle the ball for up to eight seconds, but you
can, you can get penalized if you're holding onto the ball for
longer than that.
Jane: Have you ever seen that happen?
Meg Linehan: Oh, yes, and that's been that, that can cause drama
in a games, you'll get, you know, supporters of one team
chanting 1, 2, 3, trying to force the goalkeeper to play
faster, so it's a fun, it's a fun subplot, sometimes.
Jane: you and I are actually sitting at a soccer or football
stadium, and we're right now watching some goalkeepers
practice. Can you describe a little bit what we're seeing and
where we are? Because this is pretty fun to be able to do an
interview while we're watching soccer.
Meg Linehan: Totally, so we're at a Vermont Green training here
in Burlington, and the goalkeepers are basically trying
to stop shots from within the box, so like maybe 10 yards away
from goal, and then also someone is booting the ball in, like
it's a cross, and someone might be heading it, so it's really
just to be able to figure out how to stop shots from up close
and then from really far away, because I mean we've seen it in
the women's game, there's a really famous goal for the US
Women's National Team scored by Carly Lloyd in a World Cup final
from almost at midfield, just sending it so high over the
goalkeeper, it's one of the best World Cup goals ever scored.
Jane: One of thequestions I think that sometimes kids,
especially as they get started playing, is why is the goal so
big? It's too big for one goalkeeper to be able to cover,
and sometimes the ball can go just a little bit over your
hands, you're even too short for the goal, and you gotta dive.
It's such a big goal.
Meg Linehan: Yeah, I actually played goalkeeper as a kid a
lot, and I am not a tall human being, so I would frequently
have the ball go in over my head, I think, especially as you
get older and you get taller, it's a little bit better, but
that's part of the joy of the game, is can you, can you put
the ball in a spot on the goal where the goalkeeper just
physically cannot reach, right? That is one of the ultimate
signs of pure talent in this game, if it's called either
upper 90 or top bins, when you can put it right in the corner
of the goal, so no matter how high or how low they dive, they
won't be able to get there.
Jane: One of the most important, if not the most important piece
of equipment in a soccer game is the ball.
Oliver: Hi, my name is Oliver, I'm from Canberra, in Australia,
but how do soccer balls get made?
Jane: How is a soccer ball made?
Meg Linehan: Yeah, obviously this process has changed a lot
since, you know, the 1870s when this game was really being
invented. But basically, you can think of it like a balloon,
there's a bag inside that's filled with air, and then they
surround that with essentially like some thread to keep it in
place, they put some padding in, and then there are these panels
that go around the edge of the ball, and those can be stitched
together, or now you can use heat to basically seal them
together. But the World Cup ball, for instance, for the men
is really interesting, because when you look at any soccer
ball, probably at school, or where you know your youth team,
there's all of these panels on it. The World Cup ball only has
four panels, and they've done that to try to reduce the number
of seams, so it will hit your foot differently, and it will
fly through the air more accurately. So they're trying to
make it the best possible ball. It also has a sensor inside that
can record every time it's touched, its position on the
field, how fast it's spinning, even, and they get all of that
data in real time, so we, we know everything. It's so, it's
so wild to me, as someone who grew up watching this game, and
you just be like, oh, now we have all of this information.
It's, it's so cool.
Libby: My name is Libby. I live in St. Albans, Vermont. I'm six
years old, and my question is, Why are soccer balls black and
white?
Jane: Soccer balls aren't actually always black and white.
The ball used in this year's World Cup, for example, is
pretty colorful, with white and red and green and blue patterns.
But it's true that when I think of a classic soccer ball, I
picture a black and white one, and this actually goes back to a
time before most people had access to color television.
Soccer balls used to be just kind of all white, but at the
1970 Mexico World Cup, the black and white ball was introduced,
and the contrast between the black pentagons and the white
hexagons made it easy for fans watching the games back home on
black and white TV to follow that little ball around on
screen. After the break, we ask Meg to teach us the basic rules
of soccer. What positions are there? What's an offside call
mean? Stay with us.
This is But Why. I'm Jane Lindholm, and today we're
talking with soccer reporter Meg Linehan, and listening to the
sounds of the women's squad for the Vermont Green FC as they
practice. We're talking today all about soccer, and many of
you who are listening know all the rules already, but a lot of
us don't. So, let's make sure we all know the basics. A soccer
match consists of two 45 minute halves with a break in the
middle. And the point of the game is to score more goals than
the other team by the time the final whistle blows.
Meg Linehan: So at, you know, the normal adult level, there
are 11 players on the field, you've got your goalkeeper, and
then what's fun, too, is any coach can actually decide how
the 10 field players line up, so you might have four defenders,
four midfielders, two forwards whose primary purpose is to
score, or you could have, you know, there are all these
different formations, that are called. Generally, the whole
point is to score a goal, but you have a whole opposing team
of 11 players who are trying to stop you from doing that. You
can pass the ball, you can shoot the ball, you can dribble the
ball, all of these sorts of things, try to advance the ball
forward.
Jane: But there's one rule that confuses even some experienced
soccer fans, and it's called the offside rule. At its most basic,
the offside rule is about what happens when one team is trying
to score, so the team on offense is advancing towards the other
team's goal. Now, you can't have someone on your team, if you're
on offense, hanging out near the goal without the ball, just
waiting for someone to pass the ball to them with no defenders
other than the goalie there to play defense. So, the team on
offense can't have anyone get the ball if they're ahead of all
the defenders. Again, the goalie is usually still in the goal, so
technically you need two defenders, a regular player and
a goalie, ahead of you before you can play the ball and try to
score. Does that make sense?
Meg Linehan: The general premise is they don't love it when
you're trying to score a goal and you're, you have this unfair
advantage by being behind the final defender and in front of
the goalkeeper, and suddenly magically you get the ball, and
there's no one there to stop you.
Jane: But if you have the ball and you're in soccer or
football, you call it dribbling, but it's not like basketball
dribbling, you're doing it with your feet, and if you're
dribbling all the way up the field, can you have a break away
and score on your own as long as you're in control of the ball?
Meg Linehan: Definitely, and that's one of the best kinds of
goals, there is, is when you get to run the whole field, you've
got people trailing after you, screaming, and it's you and the
goalkeeper, and you're able to put it in that, you know, low
right corner, that's come on, that's fun.
Jane: But you can't kind of be sneaky and have everybody else
on the other side of the field or the pitch, and you're hanging
back, and you're like, yeah, just throw the ball to me, and
then you score with nobody there to try to defend, that's kind of
the idea of preventing people from basically kind of hanging
back and being sneaky a little bit?
Meg Linehan: Yeah, we call them poachers, right? You know,
that's like you're poaching a goal because you're not actually
doing a lot of the work that you actually need to do to score a
goal, but it's tough too, right? It used to just be you could try
to explain the offside rule of advancing player who wants to
score a goal has gotten past the final defender of the other
team, and they can't score because of that, right? It's an
unfair advantage, but now if you actually go and read that
offside rule in the laws of the game, it's like two pages long.
There's a lot of very nuanced parts of it, because you could
maybe now be standing between the last defender and the
goalkeeper, but if you're not involved in the goal scoring
play, it actually doesn't matter. So, it's gotten a lot
more complicated. So, if you're watching the World Cup at home,
you might be a little bit confused about why something is
offside or why it isn't. There's there's a lot of rules in this
game for what you think would be a very simple game of ball,
foot, goal!
Jane: Alright. So, for kids who are already die-hard fans of the
Men's World Cup, what are you most excited about? What should
we all be looking for in these games?
Meg Linehan: Yeah, I just think it's exciting to see the world's
best here, but I also just think, you know, what we've seen
in the tournament, so far, the games have been so fun and so
unexpected, right? And I think that's part of the joy of the
tournament is that for as much as people try to predict things,
this game really does resist trying to know what's going to
happen, right. Anyone can win, for the most part on any day,
and so especially as you get deeper into the tournament, and
you get to the best teams in the world, it's really, think back
to the 2022 World Cup, that final between Argentina and
France, you had no idea who was going to win that until the very
final moment of the match when it went to penalty kick, so it's
just it's a fun, it's a fun sport to watch, especially in a
tournament setting, when everything is on the line.
Jane: If you really don't know the sport at all, or you're just
getting started learning, would you say the same thing, or are
there other things that we could be looking for that would make
the game exciting and cool as we're learning?
Meg Linehan: I also just think, you know, there's a lot of fun.
If you haven't been to a soccer game in person, you might not
understand the culture in the stands, right, for the people
who are watching the game. I mean, Scotland has gotten so
much attention for being one of the best groups of fans. They
sing through the whole game, there are flags, you know,
there's all of these things that the fans try to do to help their
team win. So, even if you might not understand what's happening
on the field, I think you can look to the fans who are
watching this game for the energy, for inspiration, for,
oh, they seem to be having a really fun time. How do I have
that fun time at a soccer game?
Jane: And you don't have to be at a big World Cup game to
experience that fun energy and fan spirit. Maybe there's a
local team near where you live.
Meg Linehan: I think Vermont Green really shows that some of
that energy, it's really easy to have it at home too.
Jane: Yeah, because you're a big fan of this team.
Meg Linehan: I am a big fan of this team. I will wave a flag
for Vermont Green at any game I go to.
Jane: What are some of your favorite chants or cheers that
the real die-hard fans are chanting that you can actually
say to a kid audience?
Meg Linehan: Yeah, I will say there is some chants that you
know, I think you got to get some parent, parental permission
sometimes to come into a supporters group at any game.
But here in Vermont, we do one that's a little silly, where we
try to get the rest of the crowd engaged, so we'll tell them to
stand up for the boys or girls in green, then we tell them to
take hats off, and then the final one is we tell them to
take their shoes off and wave their shoes in the air, so shoes
off for the boys in green, and we do that for a few minutes, so
Jane: And do you actually take your shoes off?
it's trying to get everybody excited about the game.
Meg Linehan: I do take my shoes off every single time. I think
it's unless it's raining, but even then you take your shoe
off, you just gotta commit to the bit.
Jane: One last thing before we go, Meg wants to remind you that
engaging with the sport of soccer does not have to end when
the Men's World Cup ends in July.
Meg Linehan: You know, if you're watching this World Cup, you've
got a chance to do it again in 2027 The US women's national
team, especially for the audience here in America, the US
women's national team is one of the best national teams in the
world. They've won the World Cup four times. You know, there are
all of these historical games on YouTube, so there's a lot of
ways to interact with a sport that is beyond watching a World
Cup, whether it's, you know, finding your local team at home,
whether it's playing at the youth level, whether it is just
going online and finding your favorite player, like Messi or
someone like Trinity Rodman, there's a whole bunch of ways to
become a fan.
Jane: Thanks to Meg Linehan, women's sports lead at The
Athletic, and a proud Vermont Green supporter, for helping us
learn about soccer, just in time to enjoy the remainder of this
World Cup season. And thanks to the Vermont Green for letting us
come hang out at a practice. That's it for today. As always,
if you have a question about anything, have an adult record
you asking it on a smartphone using an app like Voice Memos.
Then have them email the file to questions@ButWhyKids.org. We
will take questions on any subject, whatever you're curious
about, but if you can have your adult record you in a quiet
area, like not the car, or not when there are a lot of sounds
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question, that's super helpful to us. But Why is produced by
Sarah Baik, Melody Bodette, and me, Jane Lindholm, at Vermont
Public, and distributed by PRX. Our video producer is Joey
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curious!