The History of a Stupid Argument

[00:00:06]Soccer, football. No, I am not talking about soccer versus football, the annoying debate that for whatever reason folks insist upon having these days.

[00:00:15]What I am speaking of is the term used to describe the 11-a-side sport with kicking and touchlines and most important of all, the occasional scoring of a goal.

[00:00:28]This term soccer football was commonplace until roughly the 1930s in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, America, and other parts of the world that had multiple football codes.

[00:00:39]However, soccer football, rugby football, gridiron football, and the like are a bit of a mouthful to say. Why do we need to use two words when one word will suffice? Years pass and years pass and everyone just goes about their business calling it soccer or football.

[00:00:56]Hell, the terms are used interchangeably in Great Britain. In countries where other football codes grow in popularity, soccer becomes the preferred term.

[00:01:05]>> Every football team will be playing football several times and in various combinations.

[00:01:10]>> Most elsewhere in the world, people adopt some localized version using their words for foot and ball. Italy, of course, has its own thing. A few languages like Croatian use the local words for kick and foot. Japan prefers a localized version of soccer. No one, though, has any complaints. Certainly, no one was arguing about it, at least not until America does one of the things it does best, being obnoxious and overbearing. In the world of soccer, there was nothing quite like the North American Soccer League and the Soccer Bowl. That grated on people, especially those in the UK. Look, I get it. Soccer Bowl sounds like an item that a divorced dad would eat Hormel chili out of alone on a Saturday night while watching Night at the Roxbury on TBS.

[00:01:56]>> Today I drank a beer in the bathroom.

[00:01:59]>> The window in the hall.

[00:02:00]>> Yeah.

[00:02:00]>> Seeing the world's top stars play on AstroTurf as cheerleaders urged the crowd to show some spirit was a peculiar sight. Really though, the world just has no interest in America being a part of this soccer scene. We were not cool enough. It was the one party, the one global party, the United States couldn't show up to unannounced and crash. This does neglect the fact soccer's been played here forever and a day. Teams from Europe and South America have routinely visited the states and played friendlies here. There's even a league featuring overseas teams. Not to mention the American exploits in the 1930 and 1950 World Cups. Never mind all that though. Those who preferred to call the sport football latched onto the one main difference between America and the rest of the world.

[00:02:48]>> Americans have always had a problem with footy.

[00:02:50]>> Soccer versus football, this name debate became a rallying cry. It wasn't an argument of semantics, it was an argument for the spirit of the sport.

[00:02:59]Americans calling it soccer somehow made us all stupid. That we'll never understand this game because we use a term, well, we use a term that was come up with by the sports originators. It just happened to not be used with much frequency in several parts of the world.

[00:03:16]In order to understand any of this however, a very simple question must be asked. What is football?

[00:03:25]>> Goal!

[00:03:28]>> The thing about football is that it doesn't actually refer to any one sport.

[00:03:32]It's actually talking about the apparatus here. The, as my wife insists upon calling it, the football ball.

[00:03:39]Because while the ball, the field, the rules, they've all evolved over time, it is the football, the name of the apparatus, which has not changed. All of them trace their origins back to a ball, a field, some amount of kicking, and students. England loves to claim it invented basically every modern sport known to mankind. In fact, one time Prime Minister John Major had this to say, "We invented the majority of the world's great sports. 19th century Britain, the cradle of leisure revolution or leisure revolution, however you want to call it." The thing about that statement is it's just simply not true. There have been plenty of other football-esque games played around the world well before the 19th century.

[00:04:26]In China, Cuju, which is translated in English as kickball, was first documented in 200 BCE. The Romans had a Harpastum, which is derived from a Greek game. That gave way to Calcio Storico, which just playing a ball sport in front of a statue, a marble statue of Dante Alighieri. Just Oh, so many kinds of awesome. Long story short though, people have been playing sports sometimes with a ball, sometimes involving kicking for centuries. Great Britain did not invent sports, but they did invent something quite important about the process. They invented codifying games. They provided sports with order and civility. And let's be honest, the one thing Great Britain does better than any other civilization known to mankind is provide structure to somewhat mundane things.

[00:05:16]Rules and order, it is what the British do best, and I don't mean that as a slight. We wouldn't have sports if it wasn't for this mindset of saying, "Hey, these games need a bit of structure."

[00:05:27]That being said, England has always held their traditions in the highest regard.

[00:05:32]Not just rules, but of course there's tea, banter, and perhaps most important of all, sport. We'll get back to the latter in a bit because it's really sort of the crux of the soccer vs. football debate, but until then, it's time to get this football ball out of here.

[00:05:52]Not bad.

[00:05:53]>> Soccer is not only here to stay, but will be perhaps the ultimate.

[00:05:58]>> What tends to be forgotten in this story is that America, Canada, Australia, and others never change the name of the sport from football to soccer. Now, you may be familiar with how the name soccer does come about. It certainly recited with some frequency now that we're in the midst of an American World Cup, but of course, as football codes are being formalized over in England, each one gets a name. There is rugby, also known as rugby football. There's association football. Kids though start abbreviating that to A sock, and eventually A sock becomes soccer. But, it's just not soccer, it's usually called soccer football. At least in formal settings, especially in the media where you're going to have various codes come up. You see this a lot in England as well as other parts of the UK in the 19 aughties and 1910s. It's media usage diminishes over time in favor of either soccer or football. By the 1930s, soccer football is almost exclusively used in Manchester in the northwest of England, or when writers from that area are talking about the sport. James A. H. Catton uses it in this Evening Standard article from London, but that's because he was from Preston. He spent a lot of time covering Preston North End over the years. He was still using it even though he was in London because that's just where he grew up. Critically, as the British began taking this sport overseas in the 1890s and the 19 aughties, soccer football is the name given in the majority of non-English speaking countries. However, it gets shortened to one name, usually the latter upon arrival. In the United States and Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, soccer football is not the only game in town. This necessitated the use of the two name term, at least in more formal settings. Not to mention the fact, these are of course English-speaking countries. There wasn't really a need or desire to make it easier for locals to say. The use of football globally was really a courtesy to non-native English speakers because it Firstly, it's easier to say.

[00:08:07]Secondly, it is something that translates really well. If you see someone with a ball and you see them kicking it, and then you hear football, which would be more common word to someone living overseas than association, yeah, I can kind of see why football takes hold. Having folks in Germany or Spain or Brazil constantly needing to say soccer football would have annoyed them. They were just going to shorten it anyway. It was also totally unnecessary cuz a lot of the countries where football does take hold don't have the code wars we see in a lot of English-speaking countries. I mean, you'll find hints of rugby in South America and elsewhere in Europe, but there weren't all of these different codes using football in a lot of countries. Stateside, the rise of gridiron football made clarification of the code being played was important, especially out west, where both sports are still relatively new. Gridiron football doesn't really show up until the mid-1890s in most western states, and colleges and athletic clubs are still forming gridiron teams into the 19 aughties.

[00:09:12]Then, in California and I guess technically Reno, Nevada, rugby football is a big deal from about 1905 to 1950 or thereabouts, when gridiron football was banned. So, as soccer football arrives in the region around this time, you have to specify which code is being talked about. By the way, soccer football out west shows up in some of the oddest places in those early years.

[00:09:40]Up in Alaska in 1912, around the same time the District of Alaska is transforming into the Territory of Alaska, but definitely not the State of Alaska. That's still decades off. But, up there, all the way in the north, you have reports of a series of soccer football matches played between two teams at weird times of the day cuz of course it never gets dark up there during the summer. Soccer football in Montana was happening during the 1910s.

[00:10:05]In 1923, fair-size crowds are reported to turn up to watch exhibition soccer football matches in Casper, Wyoming. And then, in that same state, a proper league forms in 1929.

[00:10:18]Scotty Duncan moved from Scotland to Portland in 1910. And once he arrived, he helped set up soccer leagues for high schools. He organized local leagues in the area. The sport would draw crowds of 10 to 15,000 people. And his tragic passing at the age of 32 in 1924 was a sad day for Portland sports. Soccer in America, especially pre-NASL, often gets reduced down to this thing immigrants did outside of factories back east and in California. But, it was so much more widespread because there were almost always a few people from England or Scotland or Wales showing up to some weird corner of America with a ball.

[00:11:01]This isn't to say the sport isn't referred to by a single name in the States. You'll find plenty of soccer leagues. You'll find football leagues.

[00:11:10]Colloquially, it was either soccer or football for most. But, everything was derivative from the soccer football term. We know this because the original governing body of the sport in America was called the United States Football Association. But, the reason soccer football didn't fade entirely in America as it did in the UK, is that governing body, as well as several other local bodies, local organizations, decided to put soccer football in their official names, especially towards the 1930s and 40s, as gridiron football is becoming even more popular.

[00:11:50]So, in 1945, the USFA becomes the United States Soccer Football Federation, and eventually the football gets dropped in 1974.

[00:12:01]>> So, will Americans ever adopt the greatest game in the world?

[00:12:04]>> That being said, soccer football does really sort of just fade away post World War everywhere. In the United Kingdom, its usage had really started to decline in the 1930s. And after the war ends, the phrase is very nearly to be found.

[00:12:21]Instead, you'll see the terms football and soccer used almost interchangeably.

[00:12:26]No one seems to care what anyone calls the sport, save Lobby. In other parts of the world, it becomes soccer and football is dropped. In America, in Australia, in particular, this made sense because there were localized codes of football becoming increasingly more popular. These were kind of slowly, but surely getting shortened into the word football. And then, in New Zealand, like they're doing their own thing as far as this debate is concerned, so I'm not going to really focus on that, but it's there, too. The issue wasn't popularity, but it was with those running the sport either with the United States Soccer Football Association or those trying to start local domestic leagues, and there were no shortage of people trying to launch American soccer leagues over the decades. It was always plagued by this petty, unnecessary infighting. Everyone was trying to do their own thing, and the sport truly suffered.

[00:13:20]>> This is what most Americans understand by football, a fast, bone-breaking game which >> This constant bickering derailed any efforts to grow the game domestically and I think anytime people overseas caught wind of America trying to do something with soccer, they thumbed their noses down at us convinced that we were going to ruin the sport somehow.

[00:13:42]>> Are we going to see any changes in the rules of soccer when it becomes Americanized?

[00:13:46]>> There were certainly some interesting efforts to grow the sport. In the early 1960s, the International Soccer League, a topic that should get its own video one day, but this league for a few years was inviting clubs from around the world to come play in this league in America.

[00:14:02]And man, what a random assortment of teams took part in this for the six seasons it was in existence. I mean, it almost defies belief. Bayern Munich, West Ham, Werder Bremen, Panathinaikos, Hajduk Split, Bangu from Brazil. This was a who's who of club soccer in the 1960s and fans in America were very much down. So much so that someone even stole Palermo's famous pink kit from the laundry.

[00:14:30]Well, it's either that or some poor housekeeper thought they'd accidentally put in a red item with this batch of white laundry and ruined the team's uniforms, decided, "Hey, I'm just going to hide the evidence somewhere." I guess we'll never really know. Regardless, the International Soccer League drew respectable attendance figures usually averaging somewhere around 6 to 7,000 people per game. Some matches did draw crowds 20,000 plus. Folks, for comparison, the lower third of MLB teams were getting roughly 6 to 9,000 gates per game at this time. The NBA was playing a lot of games in high school gyms. So, it's not as if the ISL was a complete and total disaster. It did lose money, however, and eventually went away. We do know that these teams coming from Europe, South America, Mexico, and elsewhere in the world, we're not bothered about playing in something called a soccer league. Maybe it's because the term was still used rather frequently in England. Also, I would like to point out, 3 years before the famous shot of Bobby Moore lifting the World Cup trophy during England's 1966 triumph, he would win the Dwight D.

[00:15:41]Eisenhower trophy for being the ISL MVP.

[00:15:44]Huh, neat. Everything's mostly though fine in the world of soccer football or soccer football, association football, whatever you want to call it. There's not too much concern about what America is doing and no one's really keeping tabs on the sport in the states until 1975.

[00:16:04]Not much attention had been paid to the North American Soccer League overseas.

[00:16:09]Sure, there were some foreign players plying their trade in America, but honestly, in those first few years, it's still a relatively minor entity. It's growing. There were some positive signs there, but it wasn't something a lot of people were looking at overseas and going, "That's something we got to keep an eye on." That, of course, changes when stars begin signing for NASL clubs, even though they were mostly past their prime or came with a substantial amount of baggage. Looked super awesome for Johan Cruyff to be playing in America, but he was also basically fleeing Spain at that point in time after he and his father-in-law had declared bankruptcy and may or may not have been doing some pretty dodgy things over there. People like to obsess about Pelé playing for the New York Cosmos, but the NASL also had George Best, Eusébio, Franz Beckenbauer, and several members of England's 1966 World Cup winning squad.

[00:17:02]So, when all of these players begin showing up on American shores, the world starts taking notice of the beautiful game here, and when they did, holy hell, did they not like what they saw. Let's call a spade a spade here. The NASL was the Las Vegas-ification of soccer. It was glitz, glamour, bright lights, and a whole lot of showmanship. What the world saw was not the sport they knew, not the sport they loved. It wasn't that working-class game that everyone could relate to.

[00:17:31]>> has taken the razzamatazz associated with American soccer to new heights.

[00:17:36]>> It was, in a word, obnoxious. The rule changes, the presentation, because the sport of soccer football was still very much a working-class game at this point in history. The NASL and what was happening in the States wasn't simply rejected, but vilified. This bastardization came to be described by the word soccer. It wasn't referring to the sport itself being played, but what Americans were trying to do to the sport of soccer football. The odd thing is these various efforts were influenced by folks from elsewhere in the world.

[00:18:10]>> Mr. Woolsey, will soccer make it in the United States?

[00:18:13]>> Yes, I'm confident that it will.

[00:18:15]>> Unsurprisingly, the rise of the North American Soccer League coincides with the decline of the use of the word soccer in the United Kingdom, in England specifically. Since vast swaths of the world were already using some form of the term of football, it was also implied they were on the right side of this argument. So, the NASL implodes, but the anti-soccer sentiment remained.

[00:18:38]Indoor soccer taking off in America certainly didn't win over any fans globally. Instead, it was just another attempt by America to bastardize the sport. Although, like every other time someone has tried to make soccer a thing in America, it was driven in part by non-Americans.

[00:19:00]Then, the World Cup 1994 happens. People overseas start hearing about things like Pro Zone Soccer potentially launching, and that was going to be the NASL on crack. Then, the United States goes on a run at the 2002 World Cup, and all of a sudden, the Yanks have arrived.

[00:19:21]They can play this sport, a bit like it or not. There were so many folks around the world who found this nauseating.

[00:19:28]They didn't want America to care about soccer because they were always afraid, and they still are afraid, that we would just turn the sport into some sort of sideshow.

[00:19:39]>> Walt Disney says that the only way to make Americans love the game is to make the game American.

[00:19:43]>> There will be all these new lines, and we'll do three-point goals. Maybe we'll even do four-point goals while we're at it. Everyone can use their hands. Let's scrap offsides law. We'll have endless commercial breaks. Clubs will become franchises. Alexei Lalas will turn into some human flashlight in order to grift morons out of a few extra dollars. Oh, wait, that last one already happened. I guess we're moving on.

[00:20:05]>> There's a danger that the Americans might debase the game somewhat as the British know it by introducing too many gimmicks.

[00:20:11]>> As soccer becomes more and more popular in the States over the past 20 years or so, the tone and tenor of this football-soccer argument ramps up further. But, soccer versus football isn't really about what to call the 11-a-side game where you try to kick a ball in a goal. It's the Americanization of a sport people do not want to be Americanized. It's the involvement of a group no one wants to be involved. Now, in full disclosure, there were lots and lots of people over the years in the States trying to ruin the game and turn it into a sideshow. The argument, though, has always been framed as Americans won't accept soccer as is.

[00:20:54]>> We've come to the conclusion that soccer does not offer some of the basic characteristics that Americans seek.

[00:20:59]>> The funny thing is that could not be further from the truth. When the sport really started to blow up in popularity in the early 2000s, it was because soccer wasn't Americanized. It was so radically different from what we had here in the states that it scratched this itch for a lot of sports fans. It was just so different from what was available in the majority real died in the world waking up at 5:00 a.m. to head down to a pub to watch the Edinburgh Derby, fell in love with and have a desire for that real pure uncut soccer experience. The version we watch on TV and follow passionately. The version we will travel overseas for to go watch freaking Brentford play Hull City in a League Cup game. I was there pre-Premier League days at Griffin Park to see Marcus Bean score that 88th minute winner. When it comes to the debate about the rightful name of the sport, whether be soccer or football or something else entirely, personally, I always go back to one interaction I had while a member of the Idaho men's club soccer team. So, one day before practice, I'm just shooting the [ __ ] with our coach and he was a massive Liverpool fan. This was right around the time they'd signed Alberto Aquilani and I was jocking Serie A super hard at this time in my life. So, we're just, you know, talking about whatever. I'll also come clean here. At this stage of my life, I'm an absolute pompous dick when it comes to sports and in particular the sport of soccer. I mean, everything, really. I was just kind of a pompous dick. I mean, here's my staff photo for the student newspaper at Idaho, the Idaho Argonaut. I mean, look at this guy. What a tool. He's wearing a Jose Enrique Newcastle United jersey with the championship patches and numbers. Like, that was not an easy find, but I did it.

[00:22:52]And also, what am I doing here with the sideburns? I'll never understand why I thought this was a cool look. But, look, this gives you an insight into who I was during this conversation. So, we're talking about Alberto Aquilani and Liverpool, and I am purposely saying football instead of soccer in this conversation, as I always wanted to do at the time. And I used football a few different times in the conversation, and the coach is like, "Why are you calling it football?" And we're both American.

[00:23:21]He's like, "Why Why are you calling it football?" And I give him the reason, you know, that's the real name of the sport, that's what they call it, so on and so forth. And he was like, "Yeah, that's all right. You're You're correct, but when you do it, you sound like a [ __ ] cunt."

[00:23:36]The thing was, he was 120% correct. He was dead on. And even in my heart of hearts, deep down inside, I was forcing it. I knew I was forcing it. I wasn't doing it cuz I thought it was called football over soccer. I was doing it so I could just talk down on people with this holier-than-thou attitude about what the sport was really called.

[00:24:00]And he wasn't doing it to insult me. I mean, the way he said it was very matter-of-factly, and it was true. I felt more comfortable calling that sport soccer. I had to go out of my way to use football. And look, this isn't to say that an American can't call something a football club or even use football interchangeably in in a conversation.

[00:24:19]Like, sometimes I do it because it's just I'm so used to it, but the idea of me going out of my way to call the sport a name I didn't necessarily feel comfortable with was just absolutely ridiculous. To that extent, there is no right, no wrong when it comes to what you want to call the beautiful game.

[00:24:34]Isn't it the whole idea of this sport that it's supposed to transcend language? Football, soccer, football association football, soccer football, whatever the hell is happening on a cold, wet Tuesday night in Stoke, everybody knows what's being discussed.

[00:24:50]Nothing is lost in translation, whatever you call the sport. So, I guess what it really all boiled down to at the end of the day is do you want to be a [ __ ] [ __ ] I can speak from experience. I was that once upon a time. I was there, you know, wagging my finger, remonstrating whole city just like Phil Brown during that very ill-advised, very public halftime team telling off. And that is what people see when you hop in the comment section, when you're down at the pub, when you're sitting in the stands trying to lecture others on what the sport is called. If this is what you want to be seen as, I guess more power to you. At the end of the day, however, history shows there is no right or wrong name for the sport of soccer football.

[00:25:41]The thing is, the soccer football debate isn't about what the sport is called. We know the etymology. It was Association football that begat soccer football, which was spread across the world. In a lot of places, football or some form of it becomes the preferred term. In other places, with other codes of football, soccer took hold. Everything now traces back to the origin. Instead, soccer versus football, this debate is about people not wanting to see the beautiful game Americanized. The Las Vegasification of football. That soccer represents this unbridled commercialization and stupid rules and a focus on everything but the sport itself if America gets its way.

[00:26:27]Yet, that isn't what people here want either. The real soccer fans in this country, the ones populating pubs in the morning to watch EPL games or waxing philosophical about Fernando Morientes' run with Monaco in the Champions League, or those who still laugh at Pepsi wasting huge amounts of money on a Sierra Mist commercial featuring Pelé and Freddy Adu, well, none of us want that either.

[00:26:51]>> What are you doing?

[00:26:52]>> We're okay.

[00:26:54]>> All we want is soccer football because quite frankly, you can't have one without the other. Could you imagine demanding baseball just be called ball?

[00:27:04]Because when someone blurts out, "It's not soccer, it's football." what they are really saying is they just want their sport to be called ball because of some deep-seated resentment of America.

[00:27:16]I'll be first to admit there were lots and lots and lots of reasons to hate America. Hundreds, if not thousands of them, especially in 2026, but calling a sport one of its given names, a name taught to us by those who codified it way back in the 1800s, certainly is not one of them.

[00:27:48]>> [music]