Why do americans call it soccer

On the contrary, it was an import from England, and one that was commonly used there until relatively recently. In the early s in England, football and rugby existed as different variations of the same game. But in , the Football Association was formed to codify the rules of football so that aristocratic boys from different schools could play against one another.

In , the Rugby Football Union followed suit. The two sports officially became known as Rugby Football and Association Football. And the term, Szymanski says, was widely recognized in England through the first half of the twentieth century, according to data he crunched from books and newspapers. Games played by kicking, hitting, throwing or carrying a ball have been around for thousands of years, but in the mid-to-lateth century many sports—such as baseball, soccer, and American football—codified their rulebooks into the forms we recognize today.

Modern soccer was born in , when representatives from several English schools and clubs got together to standardize a single set of rules for their matches.

The parallel names soccer and football or the combined soccer football were used more or less interchangeably to refer to association football until well into the 20th century, at which point football emerged as the dominant name in most parts of the world.

However, in countries where another football variety was already popular—such as America and Australia—the name soccer stuck around. Start your free trial today! To answer that question, Szymanski counted the frequency with which the words "football" and soccer" appeared in American and British news outlets as far back as What he found is fascinating: "Soccer" was a recognized term in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century, but it wasn't widely used until after World War II, when it was in vogue and interchangeable with "football" and other phrases like "soccer football" for a couple decades, perhaps because of the influence of American troops stationed in Britain during the war and the allure of American culture in its aftermath.

In the s, however, Brits began rejecting the term, as soccer became a more popular sport in the United States. In recent decades, "The penetration of the game into American culture, measured by the use of the name 'soccer,' has led to backlash against the use of the word in Britain, where it was once considered an innocuous alternative to the word 'football,'" Szymanski explains.

We're not so different after all. But tell that to these guys:. Via Business Insider. Skip to content Site Navigation The Atlantic. Popular Latest. The Atlantic Crossword. Sign In Subscribe.