This comment is actually not true. In Italy, for example, it is called neither soccer or football. There it is calcio. In Australia, soccer is the more popular term and they use football primarily to refer to Australian rules football or rugby(union and league). In Burma is is called ball-pwe. This roughly translates as ball party, and who doesn't love a ball party?.
So where does the word soccer come from? Was it created by a secret US cabal that hates the rest of the world and wants to do it our own way? No, because the cabal is busy with other stuff. Soccer is an English slang term for Association Football which in turn refers to the Football Association. The slang was taken from "association". First socca(1889), then socker(1891), finally soccer(1895). Soccer, a truly English term, could have easily become Ass.
The Football Association was formed in 1863 in an attempt to formalize the rules of ball games played with your feet. At the time the English public schools(What would be private schools in the US) all had their own sets of rules. When schools played against one another, the rules set of each school would often be used for half of the match(This could be where half time comes from). After several meetings there was a split between ball play not allowing use of the hands(association football) and play that allowed carrying(Rugby, which would later split in to union and league). Rugby was named for the school where the rules were set. Association football could have become Cambridge or Sheffield, where two of the most popular rulesets were developed.
In the US we have a popular sport competing for the name football with association football. This sport was first called gridiron football(also later American football). The name comes from the five yard markers on the field, making it look like...a grid iron(Gridiron is a great name). Some of the British sports had interesting rules, one of these rules allowed for a team to simply hold the ball and make no attempt to score(and remain undefeated). This made for some super boring matches. And here is the birth of downs. This rule change forced the team to attempt to make progress towards the goal. If they could not progress a set distance in a given number of downs, the other team got the ball. The yard markers made it easier to track progress.
Some of the anti soccer, as a name, sentiment seems to be that American football is a modern sport. Problem is, that is not true. In the US, association football was played at the college level in the late 1860s, falling out of favor for rugby by the mid 1870s. American football, with the rule changes, from rugby, of scrimmage and downs/distance, dates to 1880. Gridiron football became the dominant team sport in the US, with association football all but disappearing until the 1960s.
Interesting note: The modern 32 panel spherical polyhedron, used in association football, only dates to the late sixties. It was used in World Cup for the first time in 1970.
 |
| Old School |
Football, competitive games played with a ball and feet, is a very old sport with a lot of divergence. There are mentions of football games in Roman texts dating to the 300 BC era. The Chinese football game cuju is described in a military manual from the third century BC.
The great granddaddy of all European football was mob football. A medieval sport played between rival towns, the entire townships would play. The playing field were the fields between the two towns and the goal would be a prominent geographical feature in each town. These games were played during festivals, usually one of the big holidays such as the Shrovetide festival. There are mentions of ball games as early as the ninth century and the lord Mayor of London actually formally banned football in 1314(Apparently the crowds would get rowdy. Fortunately, that no longer happens.) Football would have over thirty bans, in England, in the next 300 years.
We have the British public schools(again, these are what are considered private schools in the US) to thank for the origin of most of the organised team ball sports. In some respects even sports like base ball and basket ball came from these beginnings, as the schools were the first to organize team play and written rules. The public schools needed something to keep their young gentleman fit. This was an era of very divided classes. The lower class worked twelve hour days, six days a week, they stayed pretty fit. The upper class sat around, went to parties, and lived off the fortunes created by their ancestors(Kind of like Paris Hilton). These crusty young men needed some regular exercise. In comes Richard Mulcaster, a student of Eton and later headmaster of several schools. He was the first to set down the ideas of sides and positions, referees and coaches in the book Vocabula(1633)
The schools started setting the rules of play in the early 1800s, a key rule being offsides. Offsides meaning no player could advance between the ball and the goal, except the player controlling the ball. As the schools were often a distance apart most play was intramural, and the rule sets could vary widely between schools. This is where the real spread of game style starts to happen. You have foot/body games like what would become association football and more hand oriented sports like what would become rugby(and gridiron football)
Two things happened around this time and really helped spread field sports. First the invention of the lawn mower, first patented in 1830. Prior to the lawn mower, fields were either cropped with a scythe or grazed by domestic animals(This caused a whole other set of field hazards).
 |
| Mower with operator |
These evolved from small one man pushed mowers, to two man push/pull units, to horse drawn units. Finally the pinnacle of steam(punk) technology, the Leyland Steam mower. A huge beast with a 40" cut, it required a skilled operator to properly cut the grass while not blowing up the boiler.
Second, the Factory act of 1850. This limited working children to 12 hour days during the week and a seven hour day on Saturdays(Pretty crazy, huh). With this new massive amount of free time, the English lower class children could actually play.
And here, in the 1850s, Clubs start to form for organized play outside of schools. The rules vary from club to club, converging and diverging. Various associations form, attempting to give the sports structure. At the time all players were strictly amateurs. Being payed to play, even getting payed for missed work was a big deal. This later caused a big split in rugby. "Accusations of Professionalism", it was called. No one I know could be faced with this awesome accusation in either its current or archaic meaning.
Between 1850 and 1875 we would see Association, Rugby(League and Union), Australian Rules, Gridiron(American and Canadian), and Gaelic(or Irish) forms of football all become popular. Each with their own distinct set of rules and types of ball.
 |
| Australian Rules |
 |
| Gaelic or Irish |
 |
| Gridiron(American and Canadian) |
 |
| Rugby League |
 |
| Rugby Union |
 |
| Association/Soccer |
Calling any of them football is correct and in the company that you would likely be talking about each sport, they would know what you meant. If you are at a bar watching World Cup, no one is going to think, "The Raiders", when you ask them to guess your favorite team. At a SuperBowl party no one will say "Beckham" to the query of who is that good looking football player.
Truly, the biggest difference I can see between the sports is that association/soccer is the only sport where spontaneous injury is possible. Warning: Gratuitous ham acting
