Let’s settle this once and for all: why it’s football, and not soccer

It’s absolutely crazy to fans of sport why the United States calls it soccer, and everywhere else in the world calls it football. We’ll take the side of the “football” supporters, and make the case why American fans should take a page out of the international book on this comical yet important issue.

A hilarious commercial featuring David Beckham and Peyton Manning was released during the 2022 World Cup, where they discuss this very matter. Manning walks into the living room to find Beckham watching a match, and the NFL star says “watching a little soccer, nice!”

The former English national team captain confirms that he is indeed eating Manning’s chips (which he called crisps), before responding, “It’s the FIFA World Cup! And, it’s football.”

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According to Business Insider, the Brits might be to blame for the term soccer ever coming to light. It derived from the term “association football” used in Britain around 200 years ago. Association football is the game football/soccer fans know and love today.

The British hoped to distinguish between the different types of a similar game that could be played. For example, rugby football came into the vocabulary to identify a sport that was played primarily with player’s hands. As we know now, “rugby football” just became “rugby.”

Of course, when “soccer” and rugby were introduced to the United States in the late 1800s, the Americans decided to put their own spin on the two sports. Football, as in NFL football or American football, was born, and things got even more twisted.

According to Business Insider, “soccer” was still a popular term in Britain up until the 1980s. However, things seem to change at that point, as the term became more popular in American parlance. “When it became widely known in the UK that Americans called it soccer, it suddenly becomes what we can an ‘exile word’ in British English,” said professor Stefan Szymanski.

According to Goal’s website, other countries that often refer to The Beautiful Game as “soccer” are Canada, New Zealand, Ireland and South Africa. It’s not an extensive list, but it proves the United States is not alone in its verbiage.

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However, almost everyone else calls it football, and it’s probably for the best. The United States seems to know that it’s late to party, as evidenced by some intriguing naming conventions in MLS, America’s top football league.

It’s apparent that MLS team monikers try to sound more like their international counterparts. For example, 14 out of the 30 teams in the league have some sort of “FC—football club” or “CF—club football” designation in their name. Many clubs also add “city” or “real” to the end or beginning of their names, which is a common naming convention for international club teams.

However, certain MLS teams have stayed true to American preferences, and have added “SC—soccer club” as their designation.

Of course, the world’s most powerful governing body in the sport is called FIFA, or Federation International de Football Association. Taking cues from the highest organization in the world would seem to make the most sense. For example, FIBA is the governing body of basketball, and countries don’t take liberties to call basketball by a different name.

According to The Atlantic, New Zealand’s largest newspaper polled readers in 2014 about what the sport should be referred to as. Poll results heavily favored “football” over “soccer”, despite New Zealand being a nation that has embraced the soccer naming convention.

Of course, perhaps the most compelling reason to call the sport football lays with its name. Unlike rugby or American football, football players actually play the entirety of the game with their feet, except for the goalkeeper. In rugby and American football, the instances players use their feet is far outweighed by the instances the ball is carried or thrown.

Roger Bennett is well known these days as the founder of the Men in Blazers podcast and media network, which is a football operation by nature. He said on a podcast, “America is and has been for some time the world’s superpower. And the very few times that the world has the upper hand over America, you jump on it.”

Weigh into the great debate by leaving a comment! Should the sport be called soccer or football?

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