CNN's Coverage Of International Soccer Was A Real Nice Try, Good Effort Guys

So, someone at CNN needs to get everyone up to speed on soccer, apparently. For instance, suppose you happened to look up at the TV screen and saw this:

You may have experienced a lot of confusion. "Wait," you might have said, "David Beckham is many things -- star athlete, bon vivant, style icon -- but one thing that he definitely is not is 'French.'" That's correct. Beckham, from the time of his birth, up until this moment, is English. And England would probably be pretty cheesed off if he went out and helped France win a championship.

There's also the little matter of the next World Cup not happening until next year, and there being no European Championship tournament scheduled until 2016, which means that "France" cannot win anything for a while, with or without David Beckham, but really without, because he's not French.

What Beckham has done is help Paris Saint-Germain FC clinch the championship of Ligue 1 (which also entitled PSG to play in the European Champions League next year). But every team in Ligue 1 is French. France can't not win the Ligue 1 championship.

This is like saying that Joe Flacco just helped America win the Super Bowl. Thanks, Joe Flacco.

Later, CNN tells us that Beckham "played for England, America and France." First of all, the Oxford comma, use it. Second, again, Beckham only played "for" England. The preposition you are looking for is "in," not for. You are also hopefully looking for someone who knows about this stuff, so that this doesn't happen again.

Our congratulations goes out to France for having a soccer league in France for French people.

[Hat tip: @nickpwing]

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not?]