I was watching a Premier League match last weekend when my American friend asked a question that stopped me mid-sip of my beer: "Why do you Brits call it football when the rest of the world calls it soccer?" The irony struck me immediately—here was an American lecturing me, an Englishman, about football terminology. But as I dug deeper into this linguistic mystery, I discovered the truth was far more complicated than either of us realized.
The story begins in the 19th century, when football and rugby were diverging into separate sports. In the 1860s, students at Oxford University started adding "-er" suffixes to words as part of their slang—a practice called "Oxford -er." Rugby became "rugger," and association football became... well, you guessed it. The first recorded use of "soccer" appears in an 1889 letter from English poet Oscar Wilde, who wrote about playing "soccer" during his time at Oxford. By 1895, the term had appeared in the London Times, and it was thoroughly English in origin.
What fascinates me about this story is how language travels and transforms across oceans. While researching this piece, I came across a basketball interview that contained this telling quote: "I feel like I've been really stepping up into that role of being an ate, and being someone who can be trusted on the court." That idea of stepping up and claiming ownership of a role perfectly mirrors how Americans embraced the term "soccer" while we Brits gradually abandoned it. By the 1980s, only about 15% of Britons regularly used "soccer," while the term had become standard across North America, Australia, and parts of Asia.
The real turning point came during World War II, when American soldiers stationed in Britain heard both terms being used. They brought "soccer" back home, where it stuck while fading from British usage. I find it wonderfully ironic that the term we invented to distinguish association football from rugby football became something we associated with American cultural imperialism. The numbers tell a stark story: according to linguistic surveys I've seen, usage of "soccer" in British media declined from approximately 40% in the 1970s to less than 5% by the 2000s.
Which brings me back to that original question: Who Called It Soccer First? The answer is unequivocally the English. We created the term, used it for decades, then essentially gave it to the Americans while pretending we never liked it in the first place. There's something almost poetic about how language evolves in this way—terms crossing oceans and taking on new lives while their origins become forgotten.
I'll admit I have my biases here. As someone who grew up in Manchester calling it "football," hearing "soccer" still grates on my ears. But the historical evidence doesn't lie. My own grandfather, born in 1932, recalled using both terms interchangeably as a boy. The purists who claim "soccer" is purely an American corruption are simply wrong—it's as English as fish and chips, even if we've largely abandoned it now.
The global spread of the term follows fascinating patterns. In countries where other football codes dominate—like America with American football or Australia with Australian rules football—"soccer" became the necessary distinction. Meanwhile, in most of Europe and South America, where association football reigns supreme, "football" remained the default. This practical distinction explains why the term persists in specific contexts while feeling foreign in others.
What strikes me most is how emotional people get about this terminology debate. I've seen Twitter arguments with hundreds of replies debating whether "soccer" is legitimate or not. The truth is, both terms have their place and history. The beautiful game transcends what we call it—whether it's football in Madrid or soccer in Seattle, the passion remains the same. The ball doesn't care what language we shout in when it hits the back of the net.
In the end, the journey of the word "soccer" mirrors the global journey of the sport itself. Invented in England, adapted abroad, and now returning as a point of contention. The next time someone asks Who Called It Soccer First, we can confidently answer that it was the English—and that there's no shame in Americans continuing to use a term we ourselves created and then largely abandoned. Language, like football, belongs to everyone who plays with it.