We literally only call it soccer because the British young people who came to America for college introduced us to it and called it soccer because that was their slang word for it
And they called rubgy "rugger" because at the time, the rules of football had yet to be formalized and both version of the game were popular and so the term "football" was ambiguous. Even today, some English people call rugby "football", although most of the time they're referring to soccer.
The half of Australia that follows rugby calls it footy.
Thats a bit generous to call it half of Australia when they can barely fill a 20k stadium and only two states genuinely participate with Victoria adding a single token team.
In Ireland many still call it soccer because football is reserved for Gaelic football. We're shite at soccer though so it doesn't come up often. Still there is International Rules Football games between Irish and Austrailians which combines footie footy with gaelic.
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u/PresterJohnson Jun 18 '26
We literally only call it soccer because the British young people who came to America for college introduced us to it and called it soccer because that was their slang word for it