You can even find American soccer fans that insist on calling the sport football, not soccer, and talking about matches and tables and pitches instead of games and standings and fields. And that’s fine, call it what you want, but one word isn’t more proper than another. Soccer Insider is about our football / fútbol / futebol lexicon, how those words came to be - and why they matter so much to people.

Fall is right around the corner - where has September gone?

For the Star Tribune: the soon-to-debut Miami MLS team introduced its rather complicated name, and I wrote that names like “Inter Miami” make the league seem more fake, not more authentic. I previewed the NWSL playoffs, focusing on North Carolina and Portland, which thankfully turned out to be the right call. And I wrote about why I love the Champions League this year, and in general, since the soccer world’s biggest competition kicked off recently.

On the Minnesota United side of things, for 1500 ESPN, I graded the ten most important personnel moves of the MLS version of the franchise so far, a post that could have run to 20 moves and 2500 words, if I had the space. And, in an attempt to be positive, I wrote about the most positive thing I could think of: that the team even exists at all.

The college football season starts this week. I’ve always maintained that, done properly, soccer looks a lot less like the NFL and a lot more like college football. Here’s a couple of things soccer can learn from its college gridirno brethren, in the Star Tribune.

When sports leagues do things that are barefacedly anti-fan, I get a little bit peeved. Enter La Liga and MLS, both of which are doing their best to make it hard on fans.

Side note: This is the first week of something new, in that the Star Tribune is going to post my column on Friday during the day, rather than waiting until Friday evening / Saturday to post it online. So far, the extra interest that this is garnering has been pretty nice to see.

With the Premier League preview out of the way, I thought I’d preview the rest of European soccer for the year. The problem is that superclubs - Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Juventus, Paris Saint-Germain - dominate. So instead, I gave readers five other teams to watch instead.

(Yes, I am aware that this is a group that includes two near-superclubs, in Borussia Dortmund and Atlético Madrid, as well as an Italian powerhouse fallen on hard times. But bear with me. I wanted to make it relevant for semi-casual fans, rather than telling everyone to watch Atalanta and Real Betis.)

This has the potential to be a make-or-break month for Minnesota United, as the team clings to the fringes of the playoff race - and still traded its best striker, Christian Ramirez.

Earlier this month, I wrote for 1500 ESPN about the team’s road struggles, and how the team’s month-long road trip could derail its season.

Then this week, United traded Ramirez, a move that I just can’t understand. This has the potential to be a defining move for the front office and the coaching staff. Ramirez, of course, underlined the point by getting two goals in his first start for LAFC.

Every year I write a Premier League preview for the Star Tribune. Rarely has the league favorite been so clear; picking against Manchester City seems utterly foolish. If anyone can catch the Citizens, though, it’s probably Liverpool. This and more in today’s Star Tribune.

I’m not sure I quite hit the point I wanted to make in this week’s Soccer Insider column. I was trying to connect the dots on something that someone involved with Minnesota United told me once, who I will now paraphrase: “You know, if you can afford to fly to London every week to watch Chelsea, or to Mexico City to watch Club América, you should definitely do that. But for everyone else, there’s a team here in town to support too.”

You can see Tottenham or AC Milan or Chelsea or whoever come to U.S. Bank Stadium, and my guess is that you’ll be left wanting something more. Something real. Something that matters.

I was at the Minnesota - Seattle game on Saturday night, possibly one of the best wins ever for the Sounders, definitely one of the worst losses ever for the Loons. You can’t tell me that didn’t matter. You can’t tell me that that kind of thing isn’t exactly the kind of atmosphere that people are really searching for.

Or, heck, maybe it’s just me.

You can watch Liga MX on national TV in the United States now. In English. Club Tijuana and C.F. Monterrey have both sold their TV rights to FOX Sports, and so FOX is showing the games in Spanish on FOX Deportes, but in English on FS1 and FS2 (and on its regional networks in the southwest).

As Liga MX kicks off its year, it was a good time to preview the season - and about how Mexico is coming for soccer fans north of the border.

I started this week to try to find out how the United States can learn from France, the newly-crowned World Cup champions. What I found is that Major League Soccer is way ahead of the game - but when you look deeper, you realize that while this is good, there’s only so much MLS can do.