Soccer or football?
U.S. President Donald Trump weighed in on the debate by attending the Club World Cup final in New Jersey last Sunday. He joked that he could issue an executive order to align the United States with most of the world and ensure that, from now on, Americans refer to the sport as football.
“I think I could do that,” he said with a smile during a DAZN interview, the streaming platform that aired the tournament.
It was a joking remark, but at a moment when the United States is taking on an increasingly prominent role in soccer, the question of why Americans still call it by a name that differs from the more common one has resurfaced.
“They call it football, we call it soccer. I’m not sure that change can be made very easily,” Trump said.
Soccer continues to grow in the United States and so does its influence on the sport. They will host the Men’s World Cup with Canada and Mexico next year, the third consecutive year in which a major tournament is held after Copa América 2024 and this summer’s Club World Cup.
Other factors are keeping soccer more present on the U.S. sports agenda, and perhaps will make saying “football” more common in a competitive landscape.
Lionel Messi, one of the greatest footballers of all time, plays for Inter Miami in MLS. The Premier League and the Champions League are enjoying a surge in popularity. And the documentary series “Welcome to Wrexham” about a Welsh club climbing the lower divisions, co-owned by Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, has drawn attention.
Don’t blame Americans for calling it soccer
Although “soccer” is widely associated with the United States, it is commonly believed that the word was coined in Great Britain, perhaps as early as the 1880s.
The exact date it was first used is not known, but it’s thought that “soccer” evolved from “association football,” which was the sport’s first official name.
The English Heritage charity says the nickname may have first been used by students at the iconic Harrow School to distinguish the new association game from their older pursuit, known as “foot-ball.”
Numerous early versions of football began to flourish, often involving more handling of the ball than kicking it. An example dating back to the 17th century and still played in England today is Royal Shrovetide. Rugby is another example.
The Football Association of England was founded in 1863 and drafted codified rules for association football to differentiate it from other versions played elsewhere in Britain, and from there soccer as we know it was born.
Dr. Stefan Szymanski, a professor of sports management at the University of Michigan, wrote the book “It’s Football, Not Soccer (And Vice Versa)” and explored the origins of the name. In a 2019 talk at the American University of Beirut, he said soccer was “clearly a word of English/British origin.”
“And keep in mind that the name ‘association football’ doesn’t appear until the 1870s,” he said, “so it appears very early in the game’s history, and the word ‘soccer’ has been used again and again since it was coined in the late nineteenth century.”
Soccer was a term commonly used in Great Britain
“Soccer” isn’t a term commonly used in Great Britain today, but it wasn’t always the case.
It was the title of a popular Saturday morning TV show, “Soccer AM,” which aired from 1994 to 2023 on the Premier League’s host channel, Sky Sports.
Bobby Charlton, the legendary England international who captured the 1966 World Cup, ran popular schools for decades under the banner “Bobby Charlton’s Soccer School.”
And Matt Busby, the iconic Manchester United manager who won the 1968 European Cup, titled his 1974 autobiography, “Soccer at the Top, My Life in Football.”
That book title suggests that the terms “soccer” and “football” were interchangeable in British culture at that time.
Perhaps the word ‘soccer’ isn’t the real issue
Szymanski suggested that the problem some people have with “soccer” isn’t the word itself. It’s that it’s used specifically in the United States.
“It’s when Americans use this word that we get expressions of angst and horror, and one of the most common lines people throw out is that American football isn’t really football,” he said at the conference.
He argued that, given the NFL’s overwhelming popularity in the United States, it makes perfect sense to distinguish between soccer and its own version of football.
Not only Americans call it soccer
The use of the word “soccer” is a bit more confusing in other countries.
Australia, which has its own version of football known as “Aussie rules” alongside both rugby codes, commonly uses the term, and its men’s national team is known as the Socceroos. However, its soccer federation is called Football Australia.
It’s a similar situation in Ireland, where Gaelic football is popular. The term is used, but the national soccer team is still governed by an organization called the Football Association of Ireland.
Canada, like the United States, simply calls it soccer, which clearly distinguishes it from the NFL and the Canadian Soccer League.
The Associated Press stylebook says that soccer is the preferred term in the United States, but notes that “around the world the sport is referred to as football.”
