All eyes are on North America as the 2026 FIFA World Cup moves out of the group stage and into the knockout stage.  It is the pinnacle event of the most popular sport in the world, but what to call that sport is a bit controversial.  While most of the world calls it football, the United States and a few other countries call it soccer.  So, who is right?

Americans did not invent the word soccer.  It is actually British in origin.  Many games have existed throughout history and across cultures that could be called football.  In 1863, England formed the Football Association and formalized the rules for their game, which they called association football to distinguish it from other types of football, such as rugby football, which was also popular at that time.

College students and the English are both well known for their slang.  So, it is not surprising that students from the University of Oxford would invent new names for popular sports.  Rugby football was shortened to “ruggers.”  Association Football was shortened to “assoccer,” then to “soccer.”

In England, association football beat out rugby football in popularity.  It eventually became known as the country’s football game, and rugby football became just rugby.  But England was not the only country to have multiple sports vying for the name football.  In the United States, gridiron football was more popular than association football.  So gridiron football dropped the gridiron and became our country’s official football sport.  Association football came to be known by the English slang term “soccer,” and the name stuck.  Other countries, such as Canada and Australia, also use the term soccer to distinguish the sport from other sports in those countries, which are called football.

So, if you are an American soccer fan wanting to argue with football fans about which is the real football, ask them, “Do you mean gridiron football or association football?”  If you are being harassed by Europeans about why we call it soccer and not football, blame the English.  After all, it’s their word.

Crystal Kelly is a feature writer for Bizarre Bytes with those unusual facts that you only need to know for Trivial Pursuit, Jeopardy, or to stump your in-laws.

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