Is vs are?

Question

hi all,
i always hear football games commentators say "England are behind" or " Liverpool are dominating".
my question is, how come they use ARE instead of IS in such sentences?
if any can provide a brief explanation of that, i would be grateful because its confusing me.

ziddy

Dave Phillips · Accepted Answer

They are meaning the English players etc so therefore use the plural. If you wanted to show them as a team unit then you could the singular.

Football commentators also don't have the best command of English so that might have a bearing.

Philip · Answer

'England are' sounds terrible to my ears.  I think I'd change commentators if possible.

Tanit · Answer

Philip'England are' sounds terrible to my ears. I think I'd change commentators if possible.

I was taught that it's OK in BrE to use the name of a sports team with the verb in the plural (as Dave explained in his post).

(in American English) The names of sports teams, on the other hand, are treated as plurals, regardless of the form of that name. We would write that "The Yankees have signed a new third baseman" and "The Yankees are a great organization" (even if we're Red Sox fans) and that "For two years in a row, the Utah Jazz have attempted to draft a big man." When we refer to a team by the city in which it resides, however, we use the singular, as in "Dallas has attempted to secure the services of two assistant coaches that Green Bay hopes to keep." (This is decidedly not a British practice. In the UK, the city or country names by which British newspapers refer to soccer teams, for example, are used as plurals — a practice that seems odd and inconsistent to American ears: "A minute's silence will precede the game at Le Stadium today, when Toulouse play Munster, and tomorrow at Lansdowne Road, when Leinster attempt to reach their first European final by beating Perpignan"<report in the online London Times>.)
SOURCE

In British English, it is generally accepted that collective nouns can take either singular or plural verb forms depending on the context and the metonymic shift that it implies. For example, "the team is in the dressing room" (formal agreement) refers to the team as an ensemble, whilst "the team are fighting among themselves" (notional agreement) refers to the team as individuals. This is also British English practice with names of countries and cities in sports contexts; for example, "Germany have won the competition," "Madrid have lost three consecutive matches," etc. In American English, collective nouns usually take singular verb forms (formal agreement), but either a singular or plural verb is correct American usage where the noun is understood as a group of individual components. In cases where a metonymic shift would be otherwise revealed nearby, the whole sentence may be recast to avoid the metonymy. (For example, "the team are fighting among themselves" may become "the team members are fighting among themselves" or "the team is fighting [full stop].")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_noun#Metonymic_merging_of_grammatical_number

The difference occurs for all nouns of multitude, both general terms such as team and company and proper nouns (for example, where a place name is used to refer to a sports team). For instance,

BrE: The Clash are a well-known band; AmE: The Clash is a well-known band.
BrE: Spain are the champions; AmE: Spain is the champion.

Is vs are?

Top answer

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

Related Questions