It’s an endless debate, with English fans repeatedly ridiculing Americans for their insistence on calling the sport “Soccer”, despite their own sport bearing the name “Football” containing the clarification of “American” before it.
It’s certainly not helped the view of American players and coaches in England, with the likes of Jesse Marsch routinely ridiculed and marked as a clueless American.
There have been characters that haven’t helped the stereotype, the recent Ted Lasso comedy based around a clueless American manager drew many parallels to the former Leeds boss, Marsch. Though Bob Bradley’s time at Swansea in 2016 was far more disastrous a reign for an American manager in England, with Bradley’s time in Wales ending in catastrophe and setting back the English’s attitudes towards American “Soccer” coaches.
But, as much as this fallout and lack of faith in American coaches stems simply from the nomenclature of the sport, the English called it Soccer for years, long before the Americans did.
It’s not just Americans behind the continued usage of the term soccer, as many nations still use the term or variants of it. It makes sense considering the usage of the term in England was prevalent all the way up to the 60s, where by this point soccer had already become its name in many of the English-influenced countries.
Football vs Soccer
The term “soccer” dates back to the 19th century, derived from the full name of the game, “association football”. The inclusion of “association” in the name was important, as at the time there was a variety of sports going by the name football, most notably Rugby football, and it was important to be able to distinguish and differentiate between the two sports.
The word “soccer” is believed to have come from the shortening of “association” to “assoc,” overtime, as most slang and shortenings do, the term transformed, the game taking on the moniker, “socker”, which, given the lack of a k anywhere in association football didn’t really make sense. It thankfully quickly became “soccer.” which stuck. This term gained popularity in England eventually making its way to other English-speaking countries with USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand all calling it soccer.
The United States and Canada
In the United States and Canada, the term “soccer” is used to refer to the sport, thanks to already existing sports that don the name football, and the term having been originally taken from the English before the term football had recaptured the imagination of the British public.
The North American Soccer League (NASL), also played a big hand in popularizing the term “soccer” with America’s first official professional league operating from 1968 to 1984, playing a huge role in making the term commonplace across North America.
Australia and New Zealand
In Australia and New Zealand, the term “soccer” is commonly used alongside “football.” This dual terminology arose due to the presence of multiple football codes, including Australian rules football and rugby.
While “football” or “footy” generally refers to Australian rules football “soccer” is used to specify the game known as association football. The term is firmly ingrained in Australian Soccer culture, so much so the national team plays under the nickname “The Socceroos” though this could just as easily be because “The footballeroos” sounded so much worse.
Other notable Countries 
In some English-speaking countries, including Ireland, South Africa, and parts of Asia, the term “soccer” is still used.” This usage is influenced by historical connections with British English and the spread of the game through British colonialism. However, it is worth noting that “football” is the more prevalent term in these regions, in spite of certain countries still using “soccer”.
One such example not affected by British colonialism is Japan, who, despite their official governing body using the term “football” refers to the sport using the term sakkā (サッカー) which is derived from “soccer”. The Japanese also refer to the game as football, futtobōru (フットボール), but its seldom used with sakkā the widely used terminology.
Rest of the World
The vast majority of countries outside the English-speaking world use the term “football” to refer to the sport. The usage of “football” in these countries stems from the sport’s early introduction and its prominence within their cultures. But there are still plenty of interesting variations on the name of football.
In Portuguese-speaking countries its Futebol. This differentiation is thanks to the linguistic rules of the Portuguese language. In Portuguese, you cannot have a ‘T’ and a ‘B’ next to each other, so an ‘E’ is added in order to separate the two letters.
In Brazil where they also speak a slightly different version of Portuguese, the word takes on an entirely different pronunciation, as the ‘te’ sound is pronounced as a ‘chee’ creating the enthused sounding ‘foo-chee-bow” which sounds kind of adorable.
Finally, in Italy they decided to take inspiration from no one and just come up with their own thing, with Italians referring to the game as Calcio coming from the root of calciare meaning to kick. Which, if you were unaware, explains the name change of the major Italian leagues on the FIFA Video game series from Serie A, B, C etc to Calcio A as a result of licensing issues.
The use of the terms “football” and “soccer” to refer to the same sport reflects linguistic diversity and cultural differences across countries. While the term “football” is prevalent worldwide, the use of “soccer” is more specific to certain English-speaking nations, with the countries adopting the name as a result of exposure to English culture before Football had become the popular term for the sport.
Historical factors, the presence of multiple football codes, and the need for differentiation from other sports have influenced the adoption of “soccer” in many countries. At the end of the day, if two people love the same sport but call it different names, does it really matter?
