I was born in Bulgaria, where the most popular sport is football. I never paid any attention to the word “football” until I learned English.

At that point I was able to figure out that the most popular sport in the world is made of two words foot + ball. It makes sense, I thought.

When I moved to Canada, I was surprised the sport is called soccer, because Canada is an English speaking country.

The name soccer is used also in USA, Australia and New Zealand. The rest of the 200 countries (FIFA members) call it football.

Finally after 14 years I decided to make a research on “why we call it soccer”. Here is what I find out:

The contemporary history of football spans more than 100 years. It all began in 1863 in England, when rugby football and association football branched off on their different courses and the world's first football association was founded - The Football Association in England.

In the 1880's, Oxford University students used slang which involved adding an "er" to the end of words they had deliberately shortened. "Rugger," was slang for rugby football. “Assoc.” was slang for association football.

A student, named Charles Wreford Brown, was asked if he liked to play rugger.

'No soccer!' Was his witty reply.

He had shortened “assoc” and added "er."

The term was coined!

When football was introduced to North America, gridiron football (the type played by NFL) was already established.

To avoid confusion, Americans adopted the British nickname “soccer” for the new sport.

Article submitted by Petio Zahariev, North York Branch