![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/GettyImages-1190269108.jpg?w=2048\")
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\u201cThere\u2019s no question about it. We have to come up with another name for the NFL. It really doesn\u2019t make any sense,\u201d said Trump, an apparently new convert to the round-ball game.<\/p>\n
He isn\u2019t alone. The word \u201csoccer\u201d is, in some parts of the world, shunned by some fans.<\/p>\n
Indeed, as a scholar of the sport who teaches a course called Soccer and Global Politics, I am bombarded with comments that the word \u201csoccer\u201d does not make any sense, and that people who use that term obviously know nothing about the beautiful game.<\/p>\n
To me, this disparagement of the word \u201csoccer\u201d is not only petty and tiresome \u2013 it is also incorrect. It ignores the roots of the sport and the development of the language of the game.<\/p>\n
Rather than making the word taboo, the football ecosystem should embrace it. To understand why, let\u2019s go back to the beginning.<\/p>\n
Associated to \u2018assoc\u2019 and then \u2018soccer\u2019<\/p>\n
The game has been around in various forms for centuries, but it began to be codified in the mid-19th century.<\/p>\n
\u201cAssociation Football\u201d was coined in 1863 to distinguish the game from rugby football, which, somewhat ironically, is played largely with the ball in hand.<\/p>\n
British university students created their own slang at the time by abbreviating words and adding \u201c-er\u201d to them. Thus, \u201crugby\u201d became \u201crugger\u201d and \u201cassociation football\u201d was shortened to \u201cassoc\u201d and slanged to \u201csoccer.\u201d<\/p>\n
And this term \u201csoccer\u201d was freely and proudly used in the British press and in public for nearly a century, until the 1980s.<\/p>\n
United by a common love of the game (whatever you call it). Phil Cole\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
In countries with other established codes of football \u2013 American football, Australian rules football and Gaelic football in Ireland \u2013 \u201csoccer\u201d became the dominant term. But British fans began abandoning the word in the 1980s, largely as a response to the embrace of the term in the States. And now, in the U.K. especially \u2013 but also among fans in the U.S. and Canada who present as \u201ctrue\u201d fans of the game \u2013 there are attempts to shame those who use the very term that the British invented and proudly used.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s a pity. After all, using the word \u201csoccer\u201d has benefits. The British press continues to use \u201csoccer\u201d and \u201cfootball\u201d interchangeably to avoid repetitive writing. The shorter word is useful for tabloid editors when creating tight headlines. And using both words does not reveal that a person is ignorant but rather cosmopolitan.<\/p>\n
The widespread use of \u201csoccer\u201d in Britain is still evident in the ongoing success of authoritative magazine World Soccer, founded in London in 1960; the TV show \u201cSoccer AM,\u201d which ran every Saturday from 1994 to 2023; the annual British charity match Soccer Aid; and Sky Sports\u2019 \u201cSoccer Saturday.\u201d All document the enduring legacy of the term in Britain, despite the naysayers.<\/p>\n
A shared vernacular<\/p>\n
The beautiful game is also a universal one with a language shared by some 4 billion people.<\/p>\n
Language evolves, and fans today equally understand \u201cfootball,\u201d \u201csoccer,\u201d \u201ccalcio,\u201d \u201cfutebol\u201d or \u201cf\u00fatbol.\u201d<\/p>\n
Embracing all the variations of the beautiful game enriches the conversation. It illustrates the sport\u2019s globalization and universal language, a shared vernacular that cuts across identities.<\/p>\n
And besides, nobody wants the war that would ensue if American football fans were forced to find another name!<\/p>\n
Kirk Bowman, Professor of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology<\/p>\n
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.<\/p>\n
#soccer #football #war #160Year #history #snobbish #friends #wrong<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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