A Sporty Disagreement: Soccer or Football?

I awoke to an eruption of noise in my living room. “Ugh,” I thought, “What the frick is happening in my house this time?” I sleepily walked into the living room and saw my family, and a bunch of our close friends sitting on the couch, sipping tea, eating ice cream, and watching television with more intensity than I’ve ever seen. My brother was yelling “Go Russia!” like crazy, and other people were shushing each other. I looked at the TV. They were watching the World Cup.

Everyone in my family was rooting for Russia, cause’ all of our Middle Eastern countries had basically failed. Our only hope was our continent-neighbor: Russia.

But Croatia won.

With the World Cup craze, I decided to choose a “World Cuppy” topic: football or soccer? This great idea was given by my little brother, Hassan. A sporty shout-out to him!

I honestly never really knew what to call it either. I was raised in America, so I learned it as the word soccer, but my grandpa called it football. But after doing the research, I decided what it should really be called. I think it should be football. (Sorry America!)

Football is actually called association football. It was originated in Europe and has been played for centuries. But why is “soccer” really supposed to be called football, according to me?

 First of all, because it’s played with your foot! DUH.  America has something known as “American Football”, or football for short. And here is something weird: your foot doesn’t do ANYTHING in football, other than punting. It should be called handball, instead!

Wait, handball is already a thing. Oops.
Whatever. They should call it something else. I mean, what’s the point of calling it football, if your feet play only a minor role? In “soccer”, only the goalie uses their hands. The rest of football is played with your feet, and your feet only. There’s even a penalty if the ball touches your upper limbs!

Next, only a few countries call it soccer. Internationally, if you say football, everyone thinks about that iconic black & white ball. Go around the whole world, and most people call it football. Soccer just doesn’t exist in other countries. So why confuse people with calling it soccer?

Most countries competing in the World Cup call it football, too! Even the organization that hosts the World Cup, FIFA, calls it football. For those who do not know, FIFA stands for Fédération Internationale de Football Association, which in English translates to International Federation of Football Association. So, internationally, it’s called football, not soccer.

Lastly, I think it should be called football because it has been called by that name for centuries. Soccer was never a thing until just recently.

Okay, not that recently. I’m talking about a century ago. But it would be considered new, to how long the word football has been around!

Football has always been football for as long as anyone can remember. Well, that’s until America started throwing around a bunch of soccers and the whole world was like “Whuuut?”

Yeah, like if a sheep tried to say what.

Now, here is a question you might be asking yourself: “Where did America even get the term ‘soccer’?” You’re not alone. I searched it up online, and here is what I found.

Like I said before, football’s full name is association football. So, somebody took out the “soc” from the association and ended up adding an “er”, since it was their trend of the time.  They also threw in another “c”, because they thought it looked cool.

Okay, honestly I don’t know why they added that extra “c”. It’s just my guess that it was to look cool. Because it does.

Soccer was actually said in England for a while.  Pretty surprising, right? Football had become the “laughing out loud”, and soccer was the “LOL”, in England. And everyone, was LOL-ing when it came to discussing their beloved sport.

But then America started saying soccer to say save themselves from saying “American football.” And no one referred their beloved football, as football. The U.S started to LOL, and to England, it just wasn’t cool.

And that made the Brits mad. Soccer was their word! They made it up! And now America thought that they could just steal their word after liberating themselves. And England was not gonna’ put up with it. They stopped using soccer and began using football. The term “soccer”, just seemed to fade away from Britain… to the point no one said soccer.

America decided that now they had soccer, they were going to keep using it. Soccer soon became the term that separated football, from American football, because it was too long and it sounded weird to keep on pointing out that it’s American when you live in America.

And their folks was the story of how soccer came to be.

But honestly, it doesn’t matter what you call it. In the end, you’re still talking about the same game. You’re still watching the same game. You’re still playing the same game. In the end, you’re still enjoying the same game.

Football is what I call it. What do YOU call it? Do you agree with me? Why or why not? Who do you think is going to win the World Cup, Croatia or France? (Go Croatia!)

Why not give suggest an idea? If I find one I really like, I will totally use it! If your suggestion wasn’t used this week, don’t worry, your suggestion may be for next week!


Truly Yours- Hibba