Fans of England and the USA, at the World Cup, provoked each other with the name that each one gives to the sport
Even “sharing” the same language, United States and England have some different words, like soccer and football, that refer to the same thing. But, after all, why does this divergence exist and where did it come from? THE GOAL explains to you
The word football, which we use in Portuguese, is a clear adaptation of “football” in English, which joins the words “foot”, which means foot, and ball, ball. However, in some English-speaking places, such as the United States, this term is not used.
For North Americans, football refers to another sport – what we know as American football -, while our football is called “soccer”. However, even in England, for many years, this word has been used to refer to Breton sport.
Nowadays, however, after “soccer” fell out of favor, both by fans and the press, the term is widely rejected in England, which has adopted, for good, the word “football”.
The origin of soccer comes from the hiring and adaptation of “Football Association”, ‘assoc’, ‘assoccer’ and later ‘soccer’. This was to differentiate football from another popular sport, Rugby, which also used “Association” in its name.
In addition to the United States, other countries such as Canada, New Zealand, Ireland and South Africa also use the term soccer. In common, they all have at least one national sport more popular than football.
