The world is currently celebrating the beautiful game, but the beautiful game is called many different things around the world. In many English speaking nations it’s called soccer, but in others it’s called football. What’s the deal?
The split dates back to late 19th century Oxford England where students played two different versions of what they called football at the time. There was rugby football and association football, and when the students referred to them in slang terms they would call rugby “rugger” and association football “soccer”. The “socc” coming from asSOCCiation.
This distinction helped separate soccer from other forms of football that had arisen across the world such as American and Canadian football.
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