Eh... football refered to both rugby and soccer at one point. The only reason it was called football is because it was played on foot with a ball rather than on horse with a ball
Yes. “Football” is the catch all name for all games that fit that criteria. Each sport was referred to by a longer name- “Rugby Football” etc. then shortened such as “Rugby.” It was the style of the time to add “er” to words. For a time- what we call “Rugby” was referred to as “Rugger.” The game called “football/soccer” today somehow inherited the name “soccer” around this time. The Brits called the game “soccer.”
Meanwhile in America we didn’t really have Rugby etc. so we called our game just “football” because we didn’t have any other games and didn’t need the long style naming convention. When soccer came it was called soccer in America because that’s what it was brought over as. In time however- it really ruled the Brits that their cool slang term for the game was being used by Americans. They also didn’t like that our sport was being called just “football” as if it was THE definitive football. So they dumped the term “soccer,” and adopted “football” to refer to that game since by this time most styles of football commonly played in Britain were clearly established in names that didn’t involve the term “football,” and “American Football” was not really popular there.
So tl:dr-
We called it soccer because the Brits called it soccer as a slang term. The Brits stopped calling it soccer and started calling it Football because they didn’t like that we called our game just “football” and the fact Americans were using their “cool” slang name made it uncool to them.
We called it soccer because the Brits called it soccer as a slang term. The Brits stopped calling it soccer and started calling it Football because they didn’t like that we called our game just “football” and the fact Americans were using their “cool” slang name made it uncool to them.