Blame the Brits!

Why is soccer called football in other countries?

A few hundred years ago, when this game was getting started over in the United Kingdom, it was called associatio football, and that was in part to differentiate it from another game that also had the word football in it: rugby football.

Now, you know, college students are always want to change the names of words.

So they would call rugby rugger and association football soccer.

When the game went across the pond to the United States, it carried both names.

And most Americans started calling it soccer because that's what they were calling it when they came over from the UK.

Over the years, soccer got more established in the US, while football became the more welcome term in the United Kingdom and many other parts of the world.

But you know, if you ever want to ask somebody, why is it called soccer?

We can just take it back to the United Kingdom because they're the ones who named it.

So maybe the better question is, why is this sport called football when you almost never kick in football?

Well, actually all of these sports are football because they're played on foot, not on horse.

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