Why do British people say football and Americans say soccer? Britain used to call football soccer until about 1980 when they started to call it football. Before we start, this article is about the sport of two teams of eleven people trying to kick a ball into each other’s goal. Not the sport that is currently called football in America.
We have to go back to the early days of football in the UK to find out why. Ball games have been played in many different countries throughout history. The UK had a version of football played in medieval times that could involve hundreds of people. Two towns would kick an inflated pigs bladder between them and the winner would be the person who managed to get it to the other town’s goal. Fighting, injuries, and punching the ball were common.
Over time, this single game evolved into many different versions of the same game. Every town would have their own version. Somewhere in the 1700s, British private schools started to play these games. They were all called football, but there were still many different versions. In some games, you could only kick the ball. In other games you could carry the ball. In some games it was ok to physically tackle the other players. There is evidence that Eton was playing football by 1747 and other private schools were quick to follow. The problems started when teams met up for competitions. It was difficult to compete if every team had a different idea of what game they were playing.
There was such mayhem at competitions that the private schools decided to standardize the rules and in 1848 they got together at Cambridge University to do just that. The rules have been altered since then, but what they basically came up with was the football we know now. However, not all schools agreed with these rules. The schools at Rugby, Marlborough, and Cheltenham felt that players should be allowed to hold the ball and tackle each other. They came up with their own set of standardized rules, which obviously became rugby.
In 1863, a football association was set up to deal with rules and competitions. This became known as the football association and many private schools and universities now played association football. At the same time, many other schools were playing rugby football. In the 1880s, students at Oxford University started calling rugby football, rugger, and association football assoccer, which got shortened to soccer. Thus, in the UK, rugby was known as rugger, and football was known as soccer.
By the end of the 19th century, soccer was played by regular people as well, and the first professional football team was The Allegheny Athletic Association team, formed in 1896. As the game picked up, it spread around Europe, and then started to spread around the world because many European countries still had colonies and influence before World War 1. Many English-speaking countries that took up football called it soccer. In non-English-speaking countries, it tended to be called football.
In America, many people played both soccer and rugby. They liked them so much that, by the 1870s, they had created a new sport that was based on both of them to some extent. Football was called soccer in the English-speaking world, Britain included, so they couldn’t call their new sport soccer, and rugby was taken by rugby, obviously. They decided to call the new sport Gridiron Football because it was played on a pitch that looked like a cooking gridiron and it was a mix of rugby football and association football.
Fast forward to the 1980s and most of the English-speaking world said soccer. Britain used both words. After people stopped saying rugby football and just went with rugby, there was less confusion and a lot of people started using football to refer to football. During World War 2, probably due to American influence, soccer became far more common than football and it stayed that way until the 1980s. Then, very rapidly, people stopped using the word soccer in the UK because it had become very American. I don’t know why there was a sudden turn against this “American” expression. However, since then, the word soccer has become far less common than football and a lot of people have forgotten that the word soccer was actually coined in Britain. And this is what I learned today.
Photo by Stanley Morales: https://www.pexels.com/photo/men-playing-football-3148452/
Sources
https://www.deseret.com/sports/2022/12/10/23497245/why-americans-call-football-soccer
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/when-did-we-start-calling-football-soccer-180951751/
https://www.britannica.com/story/why-do-some-people-call-football-soccer
https://www.footballhistory.org/
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-americans-call-it-soccer-2014-6
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_football
https://spartacus-educational.com/Fpublic.htm
https://www.world.rugby/the-game/beginners-guide/history
https://www.profootballhof.com/football-history/chronology-of-professional-football/