I want to discuss my reasons to call the game “soccer” instead of “football” before moving on to the 32 nations . It may seem like a non-point, but labels seem to be important to people so there are strong feelings about which one is the “correct” term. Globally, most people will say that “football” is the proper name. I do not intend to try to persuade anyone otherwise. Instead, my emphasis is placed on two misconceptions surrounding the word soccer with the ultimate position being that, with respect to the English language, soccer is the more explicit of the two. By the end of this post, I hope to convince those who look upon soccer disparagingly that it is not such a dreadful term after all.
There are two common misconceptions regarding the term soccer: it is neither an American-born word nor exclusively American.
Elements of present-day soccer codes began to appear around the 1840s in England’s public schools, but because the sport had not yet been codified in any official capacity each school adopted its own set of rules. Gradually, the assortment of school-specific rules was met by the desire to create a set of standardized codes so that competition between schools could take place. From these attempts, two sets of codes gained favor: the dribbling version and the handling one. Subsequently, institutions like Harrow, Eton, Charterhouse and Winchester forbade the use of hands while schools like Rugby, Cheltenham, Shrewsbury and Marlborough allowed the handling of the ball. As former students of these schools went on to either Cambridge or Oxford Universities, the competing-versions issue continued. Cambridge eventually became associated with the dribbling game and created a uniform set of codes that came to be known as the “Cambridge Rules.” From these rules, the founding of Football Association emerged in 1863, but the schism between the two types remained. The impasse rested on two points: to either allow or disallow handling and hacking. Handling not only meant carrying or throwing the ball but also to bring down an opponent with one’s hands. Hacking was the act of kicking an opposing player in the shins to stop or hinder his progress. With neither side giving way, the newly created Football Association generated a titular distinction between the two by calling its variety of football “Association Football.” Not long after, the sobriquets “soccer” and “rugger” were used to further differentiate the two. The term soccer was extrapolated from Association Football, while “rugger” was derived from Rugby School in Warwickshire. When the Rugby Football Union was established in 1871, it represented the ultimate break and discernment between the competing versions of football in England.
All this is to say that the term soccer has its roots in England, not the United States. And, perhaps more importantly, to establish 1871 as my historical date of departure in examining the 32 nations of this year’s World Cup.
With the word soccer established as British in origin, I would also like to dismiss the notion that its usage is exclusively American. The term’s currency outside of the United States is most easily validated among the following English-speaking countries: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the Republic of Ireland (not to be confused with Northern Ireland). However, with the exception of Canada, there exists a discord between official naming conventions, media outlets, and the general public when referencing the sport among the other four non-U.S. English-speaking nations.
Australia and New Zealand only recently—2005 and 2007 respectively—officially switched to “football” in their federation titles, but “soccer” is still occasioned among the public and media outlets. For example, one lingering effect of “soccer” for Australians is that they still affectionately call their national soccer team the “Socceroos”. Despite that most Australian newspapers’ sports sections label the game “football”, The West Australian still calls it “soccer”. Furthermore, when the British website The Guardian launched its Australian version in May 2013, the sports editor opted for “soccer” to avoid confusion with the other codes. The same holds mostly true in New Zealand’s media. Stuff.co.nz, a website that gathers news from multiple newspapers, uses “football”, but their stories also employ “soccer”, and The New Zealand Herald’s sports section explicitly labels it “soccer”.
The federations of the Republic of Ireland and South Africa have always officially employed “football”, but the use of “soccer” is a common fixture of both the public’s and media’s sporting lexicon. For instance, The Irish Times and independent.ie both use “soccer” throughout. Along with South Africa’s news24.com and citypress.co.za using “soccer”, SAFA’s (South African Football Association) website states, “… the sport of soccer had long led the way into breaking the tight grip of racial oppression….” Additionally, their pro league is the Premier Soccer League, and the venue for the opening and finals game of the 2010 World Cup held in South Africa took place at Soccer City.
Along with the United States, Canada is the most consistent and frequent proponents of the term soccer. The official federation, the media, and the general public of Canada are explicit in their differentiation between the meanings of “soccer” and “football”. Their information on FIFA’s (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) website is listed as the “Canadian Soccer Association”, and media sites such as thestar.com, nationalpost.com, and sportsnet.ca all use “soccer” as their sport heading.
Clearly, “soccer” is not an American aberrance. The reasons as to why is located in two facts: all the English-speaking countries that use “soccer” over “football” were at one point under British control, and all have competing versions of football.
The Republic of Ireland’s unique proximity to England in comparison to the other English-speaking areas discussed is one of the reasons for its fervent anti-imperialist sentiment. One way to express those feelings was to adopt something that both eschewed English culture and assimilation and simultaneously generated Irish nationalism. Sport was one suitable vehicle to create this sort of cause and effect. Shortly after Association Football was codified in England in 1863, there was concern among the Irish that their rich sporting history would disappear under the weight of English ball games. To counter this threat, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) was established in 1884 and its ability to promote nationalism through native games like Gaelic Football and Hurling effectively captured the imagination of Irish society. Because Gaelic Football—often called either “Gaelic” or “Football”—carried specific identification, it triggered the use of “soccer” to describe Association Football and to distinguish it from its native game.
Unlike the Republic of Ireland, the great distance between England and the other English-speaking nations naturally tempered nationalistic tensions. Two other reasons that minimized tensions were the significant number of English nationals who emigrated to these distant locations and that each of these places already had an indigenous population. These two factors fostered a meaningful cultural connection for the emigrants to their homeland. Still, over time, as people settled into these areas, and because of the large distances, London ceased to be “the city on the hill.” Instead, these places looked inward to establish new and distinct identities to define what it meant to be an Australian, a Canadian, an English-speaking South African, etc.
In the realm of sports, Australia led the way by establishing Australian Rules Football and codifying it by 1859 (four years earlier than Association Football). By the 1870s, South Africa and New Zealand gravitated more toward Rugby Union Football than Association Football. Canada from the 1860s to the early 1900s played Rugby Union Football—they did not begin to play American-style football until about 1909.
The United States had long ceased to look to England as a societal model by the time American Football was codified in 1873. Because the United States was the only truly independent nation at this time of all the places discussed here—i.e. not a British dominion or tied to the British monarchy—the budding U.S. sporting culture is perhaps better viewed not as looking to be different than that of imperial England but as being in competition with it. The advent of American football, baseball, and basketball prior to the 20th century was another facet for the United States to present and position the “American way” as equal, or superior, to that of England.
Therefore, the competing versions of football in these places along with the broad range of anti-imperialist sentiments that sought new or competing identities drove the use of “soccer” over “football”. There is a bit of irony here, though. It was not until the English working-class popularized the game that the use of “football” became widespread. Prior to this, it was called “Association Football” or “soccer”—the preferred term of England’s elite class. Thus, when the English-speaking countries opted for “soccer” they aligned themselves with the politically and economically influential class most associated with imperialistf motives as opposed to the everyday person.
Contrary to what has been discussed here thus far, however, is the assertion made in a passage in Simon Kuper’s and Stefan Szymanski’s Soccernomics. It states:
“Soccer” was the most common name for the game in Britain from the 1890s until the 1970s. As far as one can tell, when the North American Soccer League [NASL] brought soccer to the Americans in the 1970s, and Americans quite reasonably adopted the English word, the British stopped using it and reverted to the word football. (Kuper and Szymanski, 186)
First, it should be noted that the NASL was formed in 1967 out of the merger between the United Soccer Association and the National Professional Soccer League. Their first season started the following year, and though the league had some success, it folded in 1984. Thus, it was the late 1960s, not 1970s, that the NASL “brought” soccer to the Americans. Second, such a statement suggests soccer previously had no formal presence in the United States, but the fact that the NASL was born out of two leagues, not to mention the American Soccer league that existed from 1921 to 1933, negates such suggestions. Lastly, it is hard to believe that the NASL was the impetus for the British to collectively abandon “soccer” and to popularize “football” for reasons that border on something near spite. Nonetheless, the credibility and recognition of these authors, especially Kuper, as respected sports historians causes one to take pause. Consequently, I decided to search archives to see if “soccer” was commonly used and whether or not it was discarded after the creation of the NASL.
The online archives of The Spectator and The Times cast doubt on the validity of Soccernomics‘ assertion. The Spectator’s search engine results include a nifty graph that displays how many articles per decade contain the requested search term. From the 1910s to 1970s there are 179 articles that contain “soccer” and 1,268 that contain “football”—approximately a ratio of 7:1. Even if the article count of “football” within the same timeframe is reduced by 420 to account for the occurrences of “rugby” where it could either be part of “rugby football” or just referencing rugby, the outcome is a ratio of 5:1. However, the “rugby” occurrences that are part of “rugby football” are much smaller in number, hence, the approximate ratio of 5:1 is a non-existent extreme. The football/soccer articles are not always mutually exclusive occurrences either, several have both terms. For example, the January 14, 1966 article “Club Before Country” by Hanz Keller and the August 4, 1966 article “Their Cup Runneth Over” by D.N. Chester employ both terms, but “football” outnumbers “soccer” by a 3-to-1margin.
Additionally, there were no instances of “soccer” between 1890 and 1910, but 102 articles for “football”, or 56 for the possibility of the rugby-search-scenario mentioned above. Hence, Kuper’s and Szymanski’s claim that from the 1890s until the 1970s “soccer” was the most common name for the game in Britain doesn’t hold true, at least not in The Spectator.
Furthermore, from the 1980s to 2000s, “soccer” appears in 303 articles, which indicates that the term’s use had not ceased, but, in fact, grew after the NASL came into existence. The Spectator’s increased use of the term could be simply a by-product of the magazine’s growth of employed writers and the amount of articles each issue published, but regardless, the term did not go away and negates Soccernomics’ insinuation that it did.
The data in The Times runs parallel to what I found in The Spectator. The first instance of “soccer” in the sports section is from the “American Athletics” article on Saturday, January 24, 1914; pg. 12; Issue 40429. Tellingly, the article states, “Besides drills and evolutions, running races, and jumping, exhibitions were given of baseball playing, basketball, and ‘soccer’ Football, as the game is officially called in the United States …” From this quote it can be inferred that football is the more expected term among the English as well as Americans already having long-adopted the term soccer.
I was also curious about June 29, 1950, when the USA beat England in the World Cup 1-0, and July 30, 1966, when England won the World Cup. On the former date, the “World Football Cup” article (pg. 4; Issue 51731) references the game only once as, “Association Football”. Four articles published on, or near, the latter date employ “football” 19 times and “soccer” zero times; this is particularly significant in challenging Soccernomics’ claim. Not only was “football” used in reporting England’s most glorious footballing moment, but it also displays the term’s common usage two years prior to the NASL’s inaugural season. It questions the notion that the British “reverted” to “football” once Americans began to use “soccer”.
As in The Spectator, The Times used “soccer” throughout their sports section during and after the NASL came into existence. What is curious about The Times’ use of the term has been that its article titles have occasionally associated “soccer” with negative undertones. For example:
- In part, Paul Gardner’s critique in “Why American Soccer is an Upper-Class Game” from January 10, 1976, is that, “soccer will not be the game of the working-class” because the NASL selects middle– to upper-class markets due to their economic viability to support a team.
- Danny Finkelstein’s, “Making Soccer a Draw Again” from May 7, 1986, discusses the various problems with English football, from tactics to stadiums to safety, and how to increase its demographic and game-quality for fan viewership.
- Mac Margolis’s, “Pilot Denies He Was Listening to Soccer” from September 11, 1989, is about a Brazilian airline pilot who is at first hailed a hero for his successful crash-landing in the Amazon that saved 42 of 54 passengers. But praise turned to scorn when it was suspected that he only had to go to such extremes because he became distracted while listening to a match on the radio.
- The gist of Lucy Berrington’s article from May 13, 1995, is well-enough encapsulated by the piece’s title, “Soccer Hooligans Target European Championship”.
With the exception of Gardner’s piece, the content of these articles contains the term football, but clearly we are past the point where any one term has enjoyed exclusivity during any period of time. The larger point is the peculiar promotion to link “soccer” to unfavorable circumstances. Undoubtedly, not every appearance of “soccer” in an article title means negativity, but since “football” predominates with respect to titles and content it is interesting that “soccer” is chosen to be in the headlines of negative stories.
Since I have only scratched the surface of the records from two mainstream media outlets, I will not claim that I have refuted Kuper’s and Szymanski’s statement, but I am confident that I have raised valid points to question it. What term the public employed more commonly and whether or not some sort of reversion took place is something that could perhaps be discerned by looking into the “Letters to the Editor” section, not to mention personal diaries or journals. However, to be fair to the authors of Soccernomics, their overall intent was not regarding the popularity of one term over the other, but the explicitness of one over the other. This is exactly my point also. In their chapter “Football Versus Football,” which compares American football to soccer, it would be a nightmare to use “football” to refer to both games. Hence, it states, “… let’s agree to call the global game ‘Soccer’ and the American game ‘football.'” (186)
To conclude, because “football” can have multiple meanings among English speakers, context is necessary for clarity. No such issues exist with “soccer”. Many do not like the term and some even frown upon it, but in English, there is no clearer term for the most popular game in the world.
