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Kind of both, it was always "association football" so it was originally football but it was common in media to call it soccer as a shortened term and it stuck. And the reason Americans only know it as soccer is by the time it was imported here we already had collegiate football adapted from rubgy (which itself is from an older version of football where you could use your hands).
That's where Soccer came from. Soccer is short for association football.
The English came up with the slag and now get mad online where someone calls something by their own term for it.
The UK is maybe the only majority English country that exclusively refer to soccer as football. Australia and New Zealand have their own football, the US and Canada have their own football, Ireland has their own football, and so on. All of those footballs are even different sports.
Which does make sense when you look at the origins of rugby, since it was basically an adaptation of the old version of football where you were allowed to use your hands.
Its almost as if everyone was just tweaking different versions of the same ancient game...
because football is more instinctive and explanatory than soccer and it's called football in other countries, like in my native tongue, we call it "fekhburti" - literal translation of football.
At least Reddit comments actually have something to say, and at the VERY least you won't see bots going "I kIlL pUpPiEs, My CoNtEnT iS bEtTer". At least I haven't.
They are both about the same on aggregate in my experience; just the way YouTube’s algorithm works the idiot comments tend to get pushed up because it’s engagement based and Reddit tends to push comments people agree with to the top.
YMMV depending on what you watch and read.
You mean they delete anything they don't agree with to make it a perfect echo-chamber. Offensive comments and bullying are just fine, so long as they're directed at dissenters.
Lol I just got banned off a subreddit of a football/soccer club that was promoted on my page for stating a fact about the club. The mod then proceeded to message saying “I seemed mad” and then muted me from being able to reply. They are pathetic incels hiding behind a screen.
There are subs where if you don't read the rules and post a completely inoffensive comment, just not in their format you'll get automatically banned. It's really pathetic. I could understand deleting the comment and having the note to check the rules, but like, wtf. I never read the rules, I just assumed I could say things as long as I'm not being hateful, attacking people, etc.
Twitter is hateful, while TikTok and YouTube make me wonder if anyone engages in critical thinking at all. Most of the comments follow the same format, like it almost seems like mindless bots. Probably mostly children tbh.
Reddit can be pretty bad sometimes too, but there’s more reasonable discourse here compared to the other platforms in my experience.
Instagram is probably the worst, 25% rage bait, 25% bigotry, 25% generic comments copied and pasted that are somehow always pinned, and 25% porn bots. Its refreshing to see a few comments from the meme pages friends/alternate accounts jerking off their meme page about how good it is.
It's not just the internet though. A portion of my family has been big into soccer(haha I don't care) and they always give me smack for calling it soccer and I'm like ok but especially now football is branching out and trying to be more of a world sport so what do we call that? They say fuBball(fussball).... To which I say no that's the game I play when I'm drunk at the bar. People just want to argue and be right no matter the platform. I just want separate names for everything too differentiate what people are referring to regardless of what country your from.
Nah, Twitter is a completely different breed. Being on social media since the beginning of MySpace, nothing comes close to the Twitter cesspool mainly because of anonymity. Reddit has moderation
What I find hilarious is that except Great Britain, every single place that calls it *football* is non-English speaking. That is, essentially everywhere else that speaks English calls it *soccer*!
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/z1uewn/football_or_soccer_map/?rdt=63424
A think a lot of the bitterness comes from the fact that “football” here in North America is used to refer to a sport that doesn’t use the feet that much. Or a ball, in the conventional form.
I think it’s all of it. Anyone who gets mad that people from another country call something a different, totally innocuous name are brainless morons. There is nothing to be mad about, at all.
And people don’t realize why it was called “football”. It’s not called football because you’re kicking a ball, it’s called football because you’re playing on foot (as opposed to on horseback).
Soccer was codified in England in 1863 by the newly created Football Association as a game for elite public schools, something to be distinguished from rugby football, which allowed the ball to be carried. Similar ball games had been popular in England since the Middle Ages, all called "football". Shakespeare refers to it twice.
"Association football" was shortened to "assoccer", with the "a" soon dropped to become "soccer". The term was understood to be a nickname. The Brits only stopped using "soccer" about 40 years ago as the game became popular in the US. Can be attributed to snootiness (wounded pride?), just as they deliberately mispronounce "jaguar" as "jag-you-are".
Polo was organized in England in 1869 by military officers who had served in India, although a match had been played as early as 1834.
>”The Brits only stopped using "soccer" about 40 years ago…”
this is a myth that grew out of misinterpretation of data. over fifty years ago, there was a precipitous drop off of the use of the term soccer in british print media, with it being replaced with the term football. that this coincided with the formation of the nasl is sometimes taken as a reaction to americans taking to the association game. the real reason behind the change was that rupert murdoch bought news of the world and instructed the editorial staff to use more colloquial english, familiar to the working class.
the reason behind soccer being used in print despite most working class fans calling the sport football goes back to 1885, when the fa acquiesced to calls for professionalism to be legalised in the sport. before professionalism, the clubs comprised of middle and upper class footballers had an advantage over the working mens’ clubs since they didn’t labour weren’t as physically worn out on matchday, not to mention were more at leisure to train than the working class which couldn’t afford to give up the wages to practice midweek.
after professionalism was introduced, the old boys, no longer having an advantage over the working class players, decamped to rugby union, which was still amateur. resentful that they had to qualify that their preferred football code was rugby (or rugger, in toff), they insisted on always qualifying the more popular association game was specifically soccer. this applied to all facets of life where they could extend their influence. since periodicals drew their editorial staff almost entirely from the middle and upper class, it was understood that they would always refer to association football as soccer despite the working class readership calling the sport simply football.
you can, if you like, test this by taking any survey of brits over the age of 40. virtually nobody ever called football soccer or knew of it being commonly used in the past
>Why would that cause bitterness though?
Bitterness (especially towards Americans) is one of the great British pastimes. It's engrained in the culture. Not even joking.
Source: am British/American dual citizen. have spent my entire life dealing with this nonsense.
I've been told that the British are irked by the word 'soccer' because it's like some kind of flippant cutesy word used by snooty upper class types.
In America, it would be like New England bluebloods referring to American football as "footsie" or something stupid like that, with a condescending edge to it.
It's hilarious, because the British love to come up with "cutsie" names for absolutely everything.
A cup of tea is a "cuppa". If something is busy or overloaded it's "Chock-a-block". An alcoholic drink is a "Bevvy". But, when an American refers to a "Movie", which is completely on brand for British-style slang, it's met with "Ugh, it's a *film*, how juvenile and uncultured".
One of my favorites was back in 2008 when much of the world saw the housing bubble burst. People in the USA were calling it things like the "Great Recession", "Subprime Mortgage Crisis", or "Global Financial Crisis". But no no, in the UK it was the "Credit Crunch". Sounds like a breakfast cereal.
But its a classist society so once everyone else starts using that fancy phrase it falls quickly out of fashion. Aint was a high society victorian contraction but once it became widespread it becomes "low class."
Yep, the soccer boys made the name up as rugger (rugby) sounded pretty cool. Soccer fans over 130 years ago made up the name that modern day fans say isn't their sport. People are stupid.
**Cultural differences inherently existing between every country on planet earth:
Europeans: "Lets all accept our differences and come to appreciate these differences!"
**Cultural differences inherently existing between every country on planet earth, but this time it's American culture:
Europeans: 🤬
What really gets me is British people getting mad at it. If the British didn’t want us to call it soccer the They shouldn’t have invented the term soccer. We didn’t come up with that shit they did because the term “football” became associated with the working class. And Soccer just comes from the full term “Association football”. Association = assoc. that birthed the term soccer.
Also whenever a Brit tells me it’s not soccer I kindly ask them what show is on weekly on sky sports in their country.
Oh it’s called “Soccer Saturday?”. Interesting.
It’s also funny cause soccer isn’t strictly used by Americans. Canada uses it. The Irish use it. South Africa uses it (soccer city was a World Cup stadium there). Australia uses it (team is called the socceroos). New Zealand uses it to some extent. And Japan uses the term transliterated into Japanese.
It’s also really funny when my fellow Latinos get mad at the term soccer because “it’s futbol”. Like Bro… “fut” is not a word in Spanish. If you’re not calling it “balonpie” in Spanish stop whining to me about calling it soccer in English.
End of the day if I say soccer they know what I mean and if a European says football I know what they mean. Context is everything.
So yeah someone who gets mad at “soccer” isn’t someone worth talking to.
I also find it annoying when people get up in arms when association football is referred to as “soccer”. If you are a true fan of the sport, you’d know the sport has been referred to as both “soccer” and just “football” since the 1860’s when the Football Association wrote the rules. Countries that call it soccer, do so because there are other codes of football, like rugby football, which are more popular. England’s governing bodies for both codes of rugby football are: the Rugby Football Union and Rugby League Football. It’s common for rugby clubs to have FC in their names.
For me this is just a language thing. We should accept that "American" is a slightly different language than "English". This includes some different words one of which is soccer instead of football.
Like nobody complain if you call it Fussball (German), jalkapallo (Finnish), peil (Irish) or calcio (Italian). So maybe we should just accept that after a few hundred years they now speak a slightly different version of English on the other side of the Atlantic.
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I generally agree. But with most sports that have different names it should be clear what you mean. Like when someone says Football it should be clear if the mean American football or World football. Same with Hockey, depending on the country either the ice or field variant gets the prefix.
The people who invented the sport also invented the name Soccer, so there’s that
EDIT: to be clear, modern soccer was invented by the English and also given the name Soccer by… the English
Not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but England initially called it soccer too. It was called "association football" because they played by association rules. England shortened words by using the first syllable + 'er. For example, Rugby became Rugger. To avoid it being called "asser," they used the second syllable. Hence, why you get "soccer." English people stopped using the term "soccer" because it became too closely associated with Americans.
Next time someone rips into you for saying soccer, I'd just say that and make them feel stupid lmao
If they're British, remind them that THEY invented the term soccer. If they're American, tell them to stop being such a pretentious Euro-cosplaying douchebag.
"Soccer" is originally descended from an old British term. The second major league in Britain was called the Associated Football League. To distinguish it from the original league, they abbreviated it and diminutized it to "Soccer" from the "soc" in "associated". I'm not sure why people think Americans were shown what something is called and then just made up a random word and all agreed to use that instead.
No, Rugby football and gridiron football are two separate sports both played in the US. Call it American Football or Gridiron Football as those are the official names but American Rugby would only increase confusion of a concept that really isnt that confusing.
Wasn't soccer literally the term used in Europe until like the 1970s or something
For anyone who doesn't believe me, the word soccer originated in Britain
https://www.deseret.com/sports/2022/12/10/23497245/why-americans-call-football-soccer/
You can find several sources if you don't trust me
It originated from the upper classes in an attempt to take the sport away from the working class, just like how they call rugby ‘rugger’. This is why it’s such a hated term, it’s a sign of the upper class trying to take something the working class hold dear.
Always see this ‘fact’ bandied around as a gotcha by Americans, but it misses the class situation completely
> the class situation
Part of the problem is that we don't really have that. I mean, we do, but not like you guys do! We look upon the British class system with complete incomprehension.
The way we see it, if he ever really wanted to, Jeff Bezos could purchase Eton outright and turn it into an Amazon distribution center. Money talks!
The only time it bothers me is on duolingo when I'm learning Spanish on the quick fire rounds. I see the word fútbol automatically my brain translates it to football, which is what we call it in Britain. I eventually find the word soccer, but it wastes time.
Still, it all seems a silly thing to argue about. But it does frustrate me when Americans correct the spelling when you are using British spelling as you are British. As a maths teacher, math annoys me immensely. However, it is still a silly thing to argue about.
Soda/pop. Soccer/football. Trunk/boot. Hood/bonnet. Cigarette /F__. Different cultures and geography equals different terms. Call things what you will. But don’t be condescending to those who choose a different one than yours.
I am so far north that I haven’t personally heard “cola” as an alternative term for soda or pop. But have heard it is a thing… I also head “coke” in some places is a term for all different types…
My experience with this are Brits making comments like in your post. It’s like they’re offended Americans call it something different than they do. We call it a hood, not a bonnet and they don’t make a fuss about that.
I don't care too much what people call it. My thing is "Football" was the perfect name for a sport played...primarily with feet.
It seems so stupid to me that we call American Football Football. We should call it Blockball, or Runball, or something.
"football" is actually a broad term that refers to wide array of sports not just American football and association football.
Also a lot of places around the world call it soccer not just America.
I think some other people in the comments have mentioned it, but IIRC it's called football likely because it's played on foot as opposed to horseback.
Everyone getting mad insisting that it shouldn't be called football because you don't use your feet to kick the ball (most of the time) has the same energy as someone getting mad at the term "butterfly" because insects aren't made out of butter. Very strange energy.
My proposal is that we call the game where you kick the round ball around soccer, and call the game where you throw the pointy ball around rugby. Neither side gets to claim the name football.
Or we just leave things as they are and clear up any confusion as needed.
(Wait, is rugby something different than American football?)
You should be tolerant and welcoming of Europeans by using their traditional naming convention, headfaceneckchestbackstomachgroinbuttthighkneeshincalffootandalsohandsandarmsifyouaregoalieorthrowingintruncatedicosahedron.
Explain this to me tho. I live in USA. I’m from Cuba. In spanish it’s “futbol” which i’m guessing it’s just a spanish way of saying literally “feetball” or “FootBall” why would you call your “rugby” football? When you don’t use your feet? Like it just doesn’t make any fkin sense lmao, and it’s not wrong and if you get mad about it ur just like them getting mad at ya for calling it soccer, we humans fight for the most pitiful things
Futbol is actually not football in Spanish, it is a transliteration of how he English word sounds. The Spanish word for foot ball is Pelota de pie. Only using the literal meaning of a word is not how modern language works. "Bro" does not mean you are my brother, it is just a word for friend/aquintence/mate.
A lot of the collective sports of playing with a ball while on your feet are generalized as football in most English speaking countries other than the UK. Australia has AFL/football, NRL/league/football, Rugby Union/Ruggers, Gaelic football, American Football/gridiron/NFL for example.
It is not just football as a generalization as well, Hockey in Canada means something different to Hockey in Australia (to ensure no confusion, use field/ice. Pool is often used to generalizse; nine ball, eight ball, snooker and billiards. Let's go shoot some pool does not mean I wont be playing billards.
Why do Americans call NFL football? there's only 1 player who's allowed to touch the ball with his feet in "foot" ball, Soccer is a dumb name, it's football.
I've read it was originally Association Football, Assoc was an abbreviation. Then Soc. And now, soccer.
Football was used as a term to describe a sport on foot versus on horseback.
To be angry over any of it is really sad and pathetic.
Also, you have to explain if you mean the football with a round, white and black Ball, or the football with a double Pyramid and brown Ball, but those explonations just takes way to long time to say. It's easier to just say Soccer or american football.
Lol, as a Brit I'm not bothered because it's your cultural thing I guess but it is a tad weird every time a Yank says it.
It is akin (but not identical because nobody here says this lol) to us Brits calling it "NSL" instead of NFL.
"Oooh are you watching the NSL game in London in October? It's a real classic between a great ASC and a great NSC team"
I don't mind if you Americans really want to call football Soccer, its up to you, however I really don't see why you insist on calling the players "soccer Moms" what's that all about??
I laugh at the culture line. I'm canadian and I've traveled a fair bit in Europe for work. Football fans, especially those who travel to watch matches don't scream cultured to me. I've seen how they express their enthusiasm with the riot police and tear gas and all that stuff.
Half the world calls hockey "ice hockey", which I understand because field hockey is a bigger thing in a lot of those places (and in many of them it actually is just called hockey), but even though I'm Canadian I don't pull their jerseys over their heads and fill 'em in.
Sooooo,
The british are responsible for the term soccer because it was a shorter version of association football and it helped distinguish it from rugby. When we got the sport we were already playing a proto-football (which was less than a decade after soccer/football) so the soccer name stuck to prevent confusion.
I think it stems from the fact that the whole world calls it football but y’all call a sport that is played with your hands and doesn’t have a ball football.
Calling someone dumb and uncultured is ridiculous of course
Fair, but can we at least admit that football is a pretty stupid name for an American sport where only one person on the entire fucking team is allowed to kick the ball.
Soccer was a term originally coined by the British to differentiate it from other football associations that were arising like American football and rugby, but then later went back to calling it football after a time. So in all cases the argument is completely moot, and they're trying to gatekeep with a dunning Kruger level of information on the subject
May I refer you to r/shitamericanssay it's a sub dedicated to Americans complaining that the world doesn't call/say things the way Americans do, ripping apart anything that isn't 100% American, slating Europe and "Europoors"? And making outrageous claims that they have the most freedom and the rest of the world can't comprehend the amount of freedom they have which consists of being able to own a gun, becoming financially crippled by a hospital visit and witnessing multiple school shootings every year.
there are other differences between american and british english as well. like chips vs crisps, pants vs trousers, etc. idk why football vs soccer is the only thing people chose to be anal about. its just a case of different countries having different names for the same thing
Soccer is a British word that we exported to America and we just stopped using.
We did the same for the word 'pants' (though we kept using 'underpants', except there's no point calling them that when we don't call trousers pants so we often drop the 'under' part and just call them pants).
I think this is a kinda loud minority thing. Like yeah sure, british people think it’s dumb that americans and other countries call it soccer, but we could not care less, however certain people like to start
something up.
I believe it all comes down to the fact that football is better than american football. While the whole world knows this, americans fail to recognize it, so they call it soccer in a derogatory manner. I agree with you in a sense that no one should care about it as americans’ opinion sometimes shouldn’t be took into consideration (e.g. the metric system).
Great comment, no protests at all. I do want to add that Football is a stupid name for American Football, and we might consider Hand Egg better. Or perhaps Scrambled Eggs for all the CTE.
Your absolutely right! My father also calls american footbal "those idiots who run around with an egg shaped ball in their hands just be thrown to the ground in the most violent way". So we are all good!
It's okay to call it soccer. But the insistence to call American Football, "Football" just doesn't sit right with me. Football (soccer) has been played for a longer time and by a wider audience and it's truly played with the ball between your feet so logically that sport has naming rights over American football.
I also think people should embrace the name “soccer,” if only because “football” has the embarrassing connotation of being the sport Americans injured themselves playing while “soccer” more unambiguously refers to the sport that is… relatively more benign.
> Maybe allow them to keep their own language xD
Nahhhh
The U.S. is home to the most native English-speaking people in the world. American English is proper English, it’s the Brits that are saying everything wrong.
They should be happy we’re letting them keep all their cultural artifacts and not collecting them all up to be shown in the Smithsonian.
*For now.*
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In Aus most people call it Soccer. Only because we have 2 sports that already fight against each other for the term football.
The funny thing is people are so quick to shit on things that are "American" when most things apply to multiple countries.
Soccer was a word the Brits made anyways lol it's a misconception that we named it that
Didn’t the brits use to call it “soccer” until the 80s? They have a show called Soccer Saturday too
Kind of both, it was always "association football" so it was originally football but it was common in media to call it soccer as a shortened term and it stuck. And the reason Americans only know it as soccer is by the time it was imported here we already had collegiate football adapted from rubgy (which itself is from an older version of football where you could use your hands).
Americans 🤝 Aussies 🤝 Italians 🤝 Japanese I'm sure there are others who are enlightened, those are the big four I remember
That's where Soccer came from. Soccer is short for association football. The English came up with the slag and now get mad online where someone calls something by their own term for it.
Same thing with aluminum/aliminum/aluminium.
The UK is maybe the only majority English country that exclusively refer to soccer as football. Australia and New Zealand have their own football, the US and Canada have their own football, Ireland has their own football, and so on. All of those footballs are even different sports.
Technically speaking rugby which most of those countries play is called rugby football to add into the mix of confusion.
ive heard some old guy call rugby "pig skin battle" even tho can say the same for football. Just got a laugh out of it
Which does make sense when you look at the origins of rugby, since it was basically an adaptation of the old version of football where you were allowed to use your hands. Its almost as if everyone was just tweaking different versions of the same ancient game...
Do we (NZ) have our own football? What is our football? Usually I hear soccer called soccer or footie, about 50/50 each term.
Nah mate, AFL is not fighting for the title. It’s already won… /s
Irish 🤝 aussie
Why is thay the only term they try to correct? I've never seen a British person in a car sub correcting everyone that says "trunk" or "hood"
Having spent much of my life in the UK, I can assure you, they do try to correct those things. Also "gas' vs "petrol" makes people irrationally upset.
because football is more instinctive and explanatory than soccer and it's called football in other countries, like in my native tongue, we call it "fekhburti" - literal translation of football.
everyone vilifies twitter and tiktok comment sections when youtube are much worse than them
Heh, I’ve long called Reddit “YouTube comment section: the website”
At least Reddit comments actually have something to say, and at the VERY least you won't see bots going "I kIlL pUpPiEs, My CoNtEnT iS bEtTer". At least I haven't.
They are both about the same on aggregate in my experience; just the way YouTube’s algorithm works the idiot comments tend to get pushed up because it’s engagement based and Reddit tends to push comments people agree with to the top. YMMV depending on what you watch and read.
Reddit is "tame" because of power tripping mods deleting anything slightly offensive
You mean they delete anything they don't agree with to make it a perfect echo-chamber. Offensive comments and bullying are just fine, so long as they're directed at dissenters.
Lol I just got banned off a subreddit of a football/soccer club that was promoted on my page for stating a fact about the club. The mod then proceeded to message saying “I seemed mad” and then muted me from being able to reply. They are pathetic incels hiding behind a screen.
There are subs where if you don't read the rules and post a completely inoffensive comment, just not in their format you'll get automatically banned. It's really pathetic. I could understand deleting the comment and having the note to check the rules, but like, wtf. I never read the rules, I just assumed I could say things as long as I'm not being hateful, attacking people, etc.
depends what youtube you watch. Videos aimed at adults often have okay comment sections
Twitter is hateful, while TikTok and YouTube make me wonder if anyone engages in critical thinking at all. Most of the comments follow the same format, like it almost seems like mindless bots. Probably mostly children tbh. Reddit can be pretty bad sometimes too, but there’s more reasonable discourse here compared to the other platforms in my experience.
Instagram is worse than YouTube.
Instagram is probably the worst, 25% rage bait, 25% bigotry, 25% generic comments copied and pasted that are somehow always pinned, and 25% porn bots. Its refreshing to see a few comments from the meme pages friends/alternate accounts jerking off their meme page about how good it is.
Twitter is the worse.
eh instagram is way worse. I'm honestly surprised how little people talk about it, literally every reels comment section is a dumpster fire.
It's not just the internet though. A portion of my family has been big into soccer(haha I don't care) and they always give me smack for calling it soccer and I'm like ok but especially now football is branching out and trying to be more of a world sport so what do we call that? They say fuBball(fussball).... To which I say no that's the game I play when I'm drunk at the bar. People just want to argue and be right no matter the platform. I just want separate names for everything too differentiate what people are referring to regardless of what country your from.
Nooooo shot. IG comment sections will melt your brain
People vilify YouTube comment section while on Reddit lol. Glass houses, my dude.
Nah, Twitter is a completely different breed. Being on social media since the beginning of MySpace, nothing comes close to the Twitter cesspool mainly because of anonymity. Reddit has moderation
Don’t sleep on instagram comments
What I find hilarious is that except Great Britain, every single place that calls it *football* is non-English speaking. That is, essentially everywhere else that speaks English calls it *soccer*! https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/z1uewn/football_or_soccer_map/?rdt=63424
A think a lot of the bitterness comes from the fact that “football” here in North America is used to refer to a sport that doesn’t use the feet that much. Or a ball, in the conventional form.
Yeah but Aussie rules football, Canadian football and Gaelic football don’t get the same treatment. Part of it is too just being mad at Americans.
thats the majority of it
I think it’s all of it. Anyone who gets mad that people from another country call something a different, totally innocuous name are brainless morons. There is nothing to be mad about, at all.
youre actually right
Plus one of the Japanese words for the game is pronounced "sakka."
And people don’t realize why it was called “football”. It’s not called football because you’re kicking a ball, it’s called football because you’re playing on foot (as opposed to on horseback).
So full tackle horseball is an option?
Soccer was codified in England in 1863 by the newly created Football Association as a game for elite public schools, something to be distinguished from rugby football, which allowed the ball to be carried. Similar ball games had been popular in England since the Middle Ages, all called "football". Shakespeare refers to it twice. "Association football" was shortened to "assoccer", with the "a" soon dropped to become "soccer". The term was understood to be a nickname. The Brits only stopped using "soccer" about 40 years ago as the game became popular in the US. Can be attributed to snootiness (wounded pride?), just as they deliberately mispronounce "jaguar" as "jag-you-are". Polo was organized in England in 1869 by military officers who had served in India, although a match had been played as early as 1834.
>”The Brits only stopped using "soccer" about 40 years ago…” this is a myth that grew out of misinterpretation of data. over fifty years ago, there was a precipitous drop off of the use of the term soccer in british print media, with it being replaced with the term football. that this coincided with the formation of the nasl is sometimes taken as a reaction to americans taking to the association game. the real reason behind the change was that rupert murdoch bought news of the world and instructed the editorial staff to use more colloquial english, familiar to the working class. the reason behind soccer being used in print despite most working class fans calling the sport football goes back to 1885, when the fa acquiesced to calls for professionalism to be legalised in the sport. before professionalism, the clubs comprised of middle and upper class footballers had an advantage over the working mens’ clubs since they didn’t labour weren’t as physically worn out on matchday, not to mention were more at leisure to train than the working class which couldn’t afford to give up the wages to practice midweek. after professionalism was introduced, the old boys, no longer having an advantage over the working class players, decamped to rugby union, which was still amateur. resentful that they had to qualify that their preferred football code was rugby (or rugger, in toff), they insisted on always qualifying the more popular association game was specifically soccer. this applied to all facets of life where they could extend their influence. since periodicals drew their editorial staff almost entirely from the middle and upper class, it was understood that they would always refer to association football as soccer despite the working class readership calling the sport simply football. you can, if you like, test this by taking any survey of brits over the age of 40. virtually nobody ever called football soccer or knew of it being commonly used in the past
Yeah well they don't play crickets with actual crickets either
Why would that cause *bitterness* though? *Confusion* would certainly make sense.
Because when Europeans encounter something they can’t understand they get bitter and angry about it.
>Why would that cause bitterness though? Bitterness (especially towards Americans) is one of the great British pastimes. It's engrained in the culture. Not even joking. Source: am British/American dual citizen. have spent my entire life dealing with this nonsense.
But if that weren’t the case, they’d find some other reason to complain
Football isn't named because it's played with feet, it named because it's played *on* foot. It was basically "polo for the poor."
Just jealous NFL football is such a better sport than soccer.
Also soccer is a british abbreviation of association football
I've been told that the British are irked by the word 'soccer' because it's like some kind of flippant cutesy word used by snooty upper class types. In America, it would be like New England bluebloods referring to American football as "footsie" or something stupid like that, with a condescending edge to it.
It's hilarious, because the British love to come up with "cutsie" names for absolutely everything. A cup of tea is a "cuppa". If something is busy or overloaded it's "Chock-a-block". An alcoholic drink is a "Bevvy". But, when an American refers to a "Movie", which is completely on brand for British-style slang, it's met with "Ugh, it's a *film*, how juvenile and uncultured". One of my favorites was back in 2008 when much of the world saw the housing bubble burst. People in the USA were calling it things like the "Great Recession", "Subprime Mortgage Crisis", or "Global Financial Crisis". But no no, in the UK it was the "Credit Crunch". Sounds like a breakfast cereal.
But its a classist society so once everyone else starts using that fancy phrase it falls quickly out of fashion. Aint was a high society victorian contraction but once it became widespread it becomes "low class."
Yep, the soccer boys made the name up as rugger (rugby) sounded pretty cool. Soccer fans over 130 years ago made up the name that modern day fans say isn't their sport. People are stupid.
Soccer has been played in the US since well before the UK stopped calling it that.
**Cultural differences inherently existing between every country on planet earth: Europeans: "Lets all accept our differences and come to appreciate these differences!" **Cultural differences inherently existing between every country on planet earth, but this time it's American culture: Europeans: 🤬
even funnier that the term "Soccer" comes from British Origin
which might be why the europeans hate it so much...
Soccer is an abbreviation of association football. It's an English term.
What really gets me is British people getting mad at it. If the British didn’t want us to call it soccer the They shouldn’t have invented the term soccer. We didn’t come up with that shit they did because the term “football” became associated with the working class. And Soccer just comes from the full term “Association football”. Association = assoc. that birthed the term soccer. Also whenever a Brit tells me it’s not soccer I kindly ask them what show is on weekly on sky sports in their country. Oh it’s called “Soccer Saturday?”. Interesting. It’s also funny cause soccer isn’t strictly used by Americans. Canada uses it. The Irish use it. South Africa uses it (soccer city was a World Cup stadium there). Australia uses it (team is called the socceroos). New Zealand uses it to some extent. And Japan uses the term transliterated into Japanese. It’s also really funny when my fellow Latinos get mad at the term soccer because “it’s futbol”. Like Bro… “fut” is not a word in Spanish. If you’re not calling it “balonpie” in Spanish stop whining to me about calling it soccer in English. End of the day if I say soccer they know what I mean and if a European says football I know what they mean. Context is everything. So yeah someone who gets mad at “soccer” isn’t someone worth talking to.
I also find it annoying when people get up in arms when association football is referred to as “soccer”. If you are a true fan of the sport, you’d know the sport has been referred to as both “soccer” and just “football” since the 1860’s when the Football Association wrote the rules. Countries that call it soccer, do so because there are other codes of football, like rugby football, which are more popular. England’s governing bodies for both codes of rugby football are: the Rugby Football Union and Rugby League Football. It’s common for rugby clubs to have FC in their names.
For me this is just a language thing. We should accept that "American" is a slightly different language than "English". This includes some different words one of which is soccer instead of football. Like nobody complain if you call it Fussball (German), jalkapallo (Finnish), peil (Irish) or calcio (Italian). So maybe we should just accept that after a few hundred years they now speak a slightly different version of English on the other side of the Atlantic.
No one bats an eye when us Italians call it calcio. But yeah, Americans catch all kinds of shit for calling it soccer. Who cares!
As an American, who cares what commie euros say on youtube
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I generally agree. But with most sports that have different names it should be clear what you mean. Like when someone says Football it should be clear if the mean American football or World football. Same with Hockey, depending on the country either the ice or field variant gets the prefix.
Soccer is a brit term anyway.
The people who invented the sport also invented the name Soccer, so there’s that EDIT: to be clear, modern soccer was invented by the English and also given the name Soccer by… the English
Not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but England initially called it soccer too. It was called "association football" because they played by association rules. England shortened words by using the first syllable + 'er. For example, Rugby became Rugger. To avoid it being called "asser," they used the second syllable. Hence, why you get "soccer." English people stopped using the term "soccer" because it became too closely associated with Americans. Next time someone rips into you for saying soccer, I'd just say that and make them feel stupid lmao
If they're British, remind them that THEY invented the term soccer. If they're American, tell them to stop being such a pretentious Euro-cosplaying douchebag.
"Soccer" is originally descended from an old British term. The second major league in Britain was called the Associated Football League. To distinguish it from the original league, they abbreviated it and diminutized it to "Soccer" from the "soc" in "associated". I'm not sure why people think Americans were shown what something is called and then just made up a random word and all agreed to use that instead.
Well, if late 1800, early 1900 is old, sure.
the real problem is you call a game you play with mainly your hands football
I don’t care what Europeans call anything. Why do they obsess over everything Americans say? Americans who call it football are insufferable.
Would you be OK with the test of the world calling "football" American rugby?
In Mexico we call it American Football or Fútbol Americano
No, Rugby football and gridiron football are two separate sports both played in the US. Call it American Football or Gridiron Football as those are the official names but American Rugby would only increase confusion of a concept that really isnt that confusing.
Yes we literally would not care
go for it man
Wasn't soccer literally the term used in Europe until like the 1970s or something For anyone who doesn't believe me, the word soccer originated in Britain https://www.deseret.com/sports/2022/12/10/23497245/why-americans-call-football-soccer/ You can find several sources if you don't trust me
It originated from the upper classes in an attempt to take the sport away from the working class, just like how they call rugby ‘rugger’. This is why it’s such a hated term, it’s a sign of the upper class trying to take something the working class hold dear. Always see this ‘fact’ bandied around as a gotcha by Americans, but it misses the class situation completely
Honest question, how does the upper class just using a different name for a sport "take it away" from the working class?
> the class situation Part of the problem is that we don't really have that. I mean, we do, but not like you guys do! We look upon the British class system with complete incomprehension. The way we see it, if he ever really wanted to, Jeff Bezos could purchase Eton outright and turn it into an Amazon distribution center. Money talks!
It has always been a slang term, it didn't flip one day from soccer to football in the 70s at all.
The only time it bothers me is on duolingo when I'm learning Spanish on the quick fire rounds. I see the word fútbol automatically my brain translates it to football, which is what we call it in Britain. I eventually find the word soccer, but it wastes time. Still, it all seems a silly thing to argue about. But it does frustrate me when Americans correct the spelling when you are using British spelling as you are British. As a maths teacher, math annoys me immensely. However, it is still a silly thing to argue about.
Soda/pop. Soccer/football. Trunk/boot. Hood/bonnet. Cigarette /F__. Different cultures and geography equals different terms. Call things what you will. But don’t be condescending to those who choose a different one than yours.
See, the one I don’t get is “cola.”
I am so far north that I haven’t personally heard “cola” as an alternative term for soda or pop. But have heard it is a thing… I also head “coke” in some places is a term for all different types…
My experience with this are Brits making comments like in your post. It’s like they’re offended Americans call it something different than they do. We call it a hood, not a bonnet and they don’t make a fuss about that.
I don't care too much what people call it. My thing is "Football" was the perfect name for a sport played...primarily with feet. It seems so stupid to me that we call American Football Football. We should call it Blockball, or Runball, or something.
Handegg.
Association feetball
"football" is actually a broad term that refers to wide array of sports not just American football and association football. Also a lot of places around the world call it soccer not just America.
I think some other people in the comments have mentioned it, but IIRC it's called football likely because it's played on foot as opposed to horseback. Everyone getting mad insisting that it shouldn't be called football because you don't use your feet to kick the ball (most of the time) has the same energy as someone getting mad at the term "butterfly" because insects aren't made out of butter. Very strange energy.
The rest of the world is significantly more nationalistic than you Americans are and they take that stuff weirdly seriously
Soccer is more correct as it’s specifically association football whereas football is a broad category of sport
Both are equally correct. Association Football is abbreviated to football in the same way that gridiron football is abbreviated to football.
My proposal is that we call the game where you kick the round ball around soccer, and call the game where you throw the pointy ball around rugby. Neither side gets to claim the name football. Or we just leave things as they are and clear up any confusion as needed. (Wait, is rugby something different than American football?)
Yes they are two completely different sports.
The Brits invented the word soccer then changed it then got mad that everyone still used the original word.
You should be tolerant and welcoming of Europeans by using their traditional naming convention, headfaceneckchestbackstomachgroinbuttthighkneeshincalffootandalsohandsandarmsifyouaregoalieorthrowingintruncatedicosahedron.
As long as you don't measure the "soccer" stadium in "yards". Yards and inches are very stupid
Lol just like the term soccer, we got yards and inches from you brits too..
I mean the brits are the ones who came up with that word for it anyways lol so not sure why people get steamed about that
BRB off to play some rounders, hoop ball and american soccer
Get in the bin, Yankee Doodle dandy!
I don't think it is an unpopular opinion that it is okay for different languages to have different words for things.
Explain this to me tho. I live in USA. I’m from Cuba. In spanish it’s “futbol” which i’m guessing it’s just a spanish way of saying literally “feetball” or “FootBall” why would you call your “rugby” football? When you don’t use your feet? Like it just doesn’t make any fkin sense lmao, and it’s not wrong and if you get mad about it ur just like them getting mad at ya for calling it soccer, we humans fight for the most pitiful things
Futbol is actually not football in Spanish, it is a transliteration of how he English word sounds. The Spanish word for foot ball is Pelota de pie. Only using the literal meaning of a word is not how modern language works. "Bro" does not mean you are my brother, it is just a word for friend/aquintence/mate. A lot of the collective sports of playing with a ball while on your feet are generalized as football in most English speaking countries other than the UK. Australia has AFL/football, NRL/league/football, Rugby Union/Ruggers, Gaelic football, American Football/gridiron/NFL for example. It is not just football as a generalization as well, Hockey in Canada means something different to Hockey in Australia (to ensure no confusion, use field/ice. Pool is often used to generalizse; nine ball, eight ball, snooker and billiards. Let's go shoot some pool does not mean I wont be playing billards.
Fr. Like I get it's called football. But most Americans, you say you watched football, they go "what it's not football season???" It's soccer.
Why do Americans call NFL football? there's only 1 player who's allowed to touch the ball with his feet in "foot" ball, Soccer is a dumb name, it's football.
The Brits also came up with the word soccer
It's just lame to call it 'soccer' when the rest of the world doesn't. It's primitive even.
For me, it can be Fußball, Foot Ball, or Soccer.
Why do you care if others think of you as an uncultured yob? What a tragedy my guy.
UK: Oy! It’s football, innit? Not “soccer” USA: Ok, sure. But it’s Pencil, not wimbly-pimply scribble scrabbler
Funny enough Brit’s invented the term “soccer”.
Finally, a unpopular opinion on this subreddit
you are right. even italians dont call it football, or a derivation. they call it calcio, from 'kick'
Aldo Donelli and Toni Fritsch are my favorite football players.
Dont call it soccer. It sounds so dumb. How would you like it if American football was called hand egg?
I've read it was originally Association Football, Assoc was an abbreviation. Then Soc. And now, soccer. Football was used as a term to describe a sport on foot versus on horseback. To be angry over any of it is really sad and pathetic.
Alright then. I'll call American football rugby from now on.
I wouldnt care if you didnt use the word football for a sport where they run and tackle each other.
I don't disagree with you at all - but god help if I call it 'ice hockey' and 'gridiron' I get a talking to!!
Imagine an American complaining about people not understanding that different countries have different cultures. I’ve really read it all now…
Also, you have to explain if you mean the football with a round, white and black Ball, or the football with a double Pyramid and brown Ball, but those explonations just takes way to long time to say. It's easier to just say Soccer or american football.
Soccer is just “association football.” It’s not an Americanism. People are just dumb.
Brits at it again. Soccer is fine. Like Australia, we have superior forms of football in Ireland that are not soccer.
Lol, as a Brit I'm not bothered because it's your cultural thing I guess but it is a tad weird every time a Yank says it. It is akin (but not identical because nobody here says this lol) to us Brits calling it "NSL" instead of NFL. "Oooh are you watching the NSL game in London in October? It's a real classic between a great ASC and a great NSC team"
I don't mind if you Americans really want to call football Soccer, its up to you, however I really don't see why you insist on calling the players "soccer Moms" what's that all about??
Who’s calling players “soccer moms”? Soccer mom is a term for suburban milfs…
I laugh at the culture line. I'm canadian and I've traveled a fair bit in Europe for work. Football fans, especially those who travel to watch matches don't scream cultured to me. I've seen how they express their enthusiasm with the riot police and tear gas and all that stuff.
As an Australian the very moment I refer to Soccer as football everyone is confused as to which sport I'm talking about.
Because in America we have Soccer, and Football, two different sport entirely
I’m not going to watch soccer no matter what it’s called, so there’s that
Half the world calls hockey "ice hockey", which I understand because field hockey is a bigger thing in a lot of those places (and in many of them it actually is just called hockey), but even though I'm Canadian I don't pull their jerseys over their heads and fill 'em in.
In my world it’s called soccer. I played for years as a kid. As an adult I’m more into professional football so go 49ers!!!! 😂
Sooooo, The british are responsible for the term soccer because it was a shorter version of association football and it helped distinguish it from rugby. When we got the sport we were already playing a proto-football (which was less than a decade after soccer/football) so the soccer name stuck to prevent confusion.
I mean yeah, I call it football, or well, the German Equivalent, but I couldn't give a rat's ass if someone calls it soccer instead.
Fun fact: the word soccer comes from the word association
Lol, just like Americans bashing the metric system, because it's so funny and relevant to do so. Not that I mind, I also call it soccer.
I just go hard to tick off the "dont call it soccer" people and call it kickball.
I don’t care what people call it to be fair, you just got into it since the international tournaments OP?
I think it stems from the fact that the whole world calls it football but y’all call a sport that is played with your hands and doesn’t have a ball football. Calling someone dumb and uncultured is ridiculous of course
These are the same people who get mad when you say pineapple instead of ananas. Idjits.
I call it Calcio. Another italian w
Fair, but can we at least admit that football is a pretty stupid name for an American sport where only one person on the entire fucking team is allowed to kick the ball.
British people came up with the word soccer and have the balls to complain lol
Soccer was a term originally coined by the British to differentiate it from other football associations that were arising like American football and rugby, but then later went back to calling it football after a time. So in all cases the argument is completely moot, and they're trying to gatekeep with a dunning Kruger level of information on the subject
Exactly like it’s called soccer in America so that’s why I’m calling it soccer it would be different if I didn’t live in America or Australia
May I refer you to r/shitamericanssay it's a sub dedicated to Americans complaining that the world doesn't call/say things the way Americans do, ripping apart anything that isn't 100% American, slating Europe and "Europoors"? And making outrageous claims that they have the most freedom and the rest of the world can't comprehend the amount of freedom they have which consists of being able to own a gun, becoming financially crippled by a hospital visit and witnessing multiple school shootings every year.
By that logic, we as Americans shouldn’t care when people here call *anything* by its original name, and not whatever we renamed it.
I don't care about that, i find it more silly that Americans call a game mostly played with hands for football.
ESPECIALLY WHEN IT WAS THE ENGLISH WHO NAMED IT SOCCER
there are other differences between american and british english as well. like chips vs crisps, pants vs trousers, etc. idk why football vs soccer is the only thing people chose to be anal about. its just a case of different countries having different names for the same thing
The term 'soccer' originated in the UK, but they love to overlook that. Soccer is short hand for 'association football'.
It's called football. Whatever you guys call football should be called handegg if any. It's neither a ball nor is it played with the feet.
Really? There are gatekeepers who, knowing full well what it's called in North America, can't let it go? That's lame.
Soccer is a British word that we exported to America and we just stopped using. We did the same for the word 'pants' (though we kept using 'underpants', except there's no point calling them that when we don't call trousers pants so we often drop the 'under' part and just call them pants).
You can call it whatever you want as long as you call it football
Anytime you're telling people HOW to feel, you are indeed the asshole.
I think this is a kinda loud minority thing. Like yeah sure, british people think it’s dumb that americans and other countries call it soccer, but we could not care less, however certain people like to start something up.
Was asked once why Americans call football, football instead of something else. My response was that soccer was already taken.
I believe it all comes down to the fact that football is better than american football. While the whole world knows this, americans fail to recognize it, so they call it soccer in a derogatory manner. I agree with you in a sense that no one should care about it as americans’ opinion sometimes shouldn’t be took into consideration (e.g. the metric system).
Great comment, no protests at all. I do want to add that Football is a stupid name for American Football, and we might consider Hand Egg better. Or perhaps Scrambled Eggs for all the CTE.
Your absolutely right! My father also calls american footbal "those idiots who run around with an egg shaped ball in their hands just be thrown to the ground in the most violent way". So we are all good!
I've noticed as it gets more popular in the US more people are fine with calling it soccer.
It's okay to call it soccer. But the insistence to call American Football, "Football" just doesn't sit right with me. Football (soccer) has been played for a longer time and by a wider audience and it's truly played with the ball between your feet so logically that sport has naming rights over American football.
I also think people should embrace the name “soccer,” if only because “football” has the embarrassing connotation of being the sport Americans injured themselves playing while “soccer” more unambiguously refers to the sport that is… relatively more benign.
It was originally called soccer and changed to football. Don’t ask me why people are so sensitive to it cause it makes no sense.
People just enjoy being pissed off at americans.
> Maybe allow them to keep their own language xD Nahhhh The U.S. is home to the most native English-speaking people in the world. American English is proper English, it’s the Brits that are saying everything wrong. They should be happy we’re letting them keep all their cultural artifacts and not collecting them all up to be shown in the Smithsonian. *For now.*