Why do Americans call it soccer?
There is no better way to spark an argument than football vs soccer
Where does the word soccer come from?
Did you know the word soccer is actually British in origin? So how did the word soccer come about? And why do some English speaking countries not named England call the sport something completely different from the rest of the world? The answer lies in how the sport developed in each country, and the diverse set of sports and people that have spread across the world over time.
Although games with a ball kicked by two teams trying to score a goal have been around for centuries, the sport we know today is traced back to 1863. Teams from different villages would show up to matches of ‘football’ where one team would want to play with their hands and feet while tackling opponents, and the other team wanted to play with only their feet. In order to settle confusion, England formed the Football Association and created a set of rules creating consistency between village school teams. Rugby football, named after an English boarding school in…Rugby, was a variation that allowed players to carry and run with the ball to advance it toward the goal. The game played under the Football Association’s rules thus became known as association football.
Inevitably, the names Association Football and Rugby Football would be shortened. Linguistically creative students at the University of Oxford in the 1880s distinguished between the sports of “rugger” and “assoccer”. The latter term was further shortened to “soccer” (sometimes spelled “socker”), and the name quickly spread beyond the campus. However, “soccer” never became much more than a nickname in Great Britain and mostly among the elites. By the 20th century, rugby football was more commonly called rugby, while association football had earned the right to be known as just plain football.
Why do Americans call football soccer?
Meanwhile… in the United States, a sport emerged in the late 19th century that borrowed elements of both rugby and association football. Before long, it had proved more popular than either of them. In full, it was known as gridiron football, but most people never bothered with the first word. It’s now known across the world as American football or handegg to truly distinguished… but should probably have been named American rugby. However the world is a dark dark place and nothing is ever as easy or simple as that. As a result, American association-football players increasingly adopted soccer to refer to their sport. The United States Football Association, which had formed in the 1910s as the official organizing body of American soccer, changed its name to the United States Soccer Football Association in 1945, and it later dispensed with the “Football” altogether. No longer just a nickname, soccer had stuck.
Other countries where the word soccer is common have competing forms of football. For instance, Canada has its own version of gridiron football; Ireland is home to Gaelic football; and Australia is mad about Australian rules football (which is derived from rugby). In places where football can be ambiguous, soccer is usefully precise.