Santos, Flamengo, Estudiantes, Velez Sarsfield – no one calls these teams “the” anything. If anything, it’s the American custom of using the definite article that’s unique, or at least not so common. I think some African football teams use “the.”

As for “Liverpool are” v. “is” – that’s just a different way of seeing a sports team. The Brits see a team as plural, Americans as singular. Simple as that.

Firstly the official name is Rangers FC and, though I am not among them, many Rangers supporters dislike the way non-Scottish people use the prefix “Glasgow”. That said, when the prefix is used, the definite article often is too, contrary to your assumption. “I support the Glasgow Rangers” is perfectly normal, as is simply The Rangers. Both with and without are absolutely fine. Indeed, the original club crest read “The Rangers Football Club.”

The “never end a sentence with a preposition” “rule” was essentially plucked out of thin air by John Dryden in 1672. There is no good reason to always adhere to it.

(Incidentally, why did you write “…more than one to begin with” rather than “…more than one with which to begin”?)

“Whom” is a remnant of a morphological case system which has practically disappeared from English. Traces remain, such as with personal pronouns (eg. subjective “I”, objective “me”). The who/whom distinction is being lost in most situations; it rarely results in confusion, just like how we already get by just fine with identical subjective and objective forms of the second personal pronoun (“you”/”you”).

“If I was…” is a very common alternative to “If I were…”; again, the sense still comes across perfectly well. As indeed it does when one uses a singular verb with a collective noun. Either is acceptable; one happens to be more common west of the Atlantic, the other east. Which is the point, really: what is correct in a language is determined by all the people who use it, and this often results in messiness and irregularity and variety — features of language, not bugs. Millions of people have been ignoring your fifth-grade teacher for years and we have somehow avoided falling into mutual unintelligibility. If language never changed, your comment would not have been possible: you would have merely been able to squawk ape-like and slap the person nearest you.

And would you look at that — I’ve not been smitten with a thunderbolt.

I’d certainly say that both the Americans and the British do not know how to speak properly anymore nor do the British know that they do not speak properly. That is, of course, not to say that some Americans and some British don’t speak properly because that certainly isn’t the case either. However, the teaching of grammar in American and British schools is not done very well.

I have been to London twice and have been to many different regions of the U.S., and have heard most people on both sides of the pond end sentences with prepositions which is in clear violation of all English grammar rules. The lack of the use of whom is also non-existent; especially in the U.S. Everyone I hear would ask, “Who were you talking to?” instead of, “To whom were you talking?” Lastly, I rarely hear anyone in the U.S. use the subjunctive in English which is a shame. I cannot stand hearing someone say, “If I “was”…” If clearly implies a hypothecial scenario and requires the subjunctive “were.”

That said, many (perhaps most) old-time Gooners refer to “the Arsenal”. Arsenal, as an institution demanding an article i.e., The National Trust.

Second: AlbanScot, no one in America would say “Spurs is”; we’d say “Spurs are” and “Tottenham is,” following the singular or plural form of the noun. But I know what you mean about the implied plurality of groups. I don’t think there’s really a bad approach here, actually.

Colin – yes, I support the New York Jets and am also a season ticket holder.

Often people forget that most Languages are evolving very quickly, even in a generation, and US and British English are also diverging.

My post though relates more to the discussions about the use of mass noun plurals rather than the definite article.

There are 2 reasons that I prefer to use ‘are’ when talking about teams;
- many teams have names ending in s (Rangers, Spurs, Rovers) and to say ‘Spurs is’ just doesn’t sound right.
- when I think of teams I think of many people (players, managers, fans) and therefore ‘Arsenal are’ feels better. To use ‘is’ would imply it/he/she. ‘It’ seems impersonal and we don’t really give teams a gender in the way that cars or trains might have one.