Fútbol, Soccer, or American football? We’re here to help you figure it out!

Football vs Soccer

Football or soccer? This is an age-old debate that depends if you’re in the U.S. or if you’re in almost any other country in the world. Starting from the same sport, or the same word, we can end up with four completely different terms. Let’s begin with football. 

What’s the difference between football and American football?

The word “football” In Great Britain, most of Ulster in the north of Ireland, and many other countries around the world refers to a game in which two teams made up of 11 players primarily use their feet to propel a ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The name is just obvious: foot-ball.

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However, this same game is usually called “soccer” in regions and countries where other variations of football are prevalent, such as Australia, Canada, South Africa, most of Ireland, Japan, and, mainly, the United States. And what these countries call football is an entirely different sport, sometimes referred to as American football. 

The objective of the game is to score more goals than the opposite team by moving the ball beyond the goal line into a rectangular-framed goal defended by the opposing side. The sport is estimated to have around 250 million players active in over 200 countries and territories and is considered the world’s most popular sport.

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Even though there are stories about football being played in ancient times, in Greece, the Roman Empire, or China, even before Christ, the game as we know it today, and the name itself, was established in Great Britain in the 19th Century. The first Cup, as well as the first international match, was played in England in the second half of the 1800s. The name comes from a shortened version of Association Football, the term established in 1863 when the Football Association codified the rules of the game. The word ‘association’ was added to distinguish it from other games, such as rugby.

Meanwhile, the term soccer comes from Oxford “-er” slang, which was prevalent at the University of Oxford in England from about 1875, and is thought to have been borrowed from rugby slang. Initially spelled “assoccer,” it was later reduced to the modern spelling. The word “soccer” arrived at its final form in 1895 and was first recorded in 1889 in the earlier form of “socca.”

How do you say “football” in Spanish? 

Still speaking about the same sport, we have “fútbol” the Spanish version of “football,” that instead of being translated to “balompié” – a term that is still used in some countries- was just turned into an easier pronunciation for Spanish-speaking countries. In fact, when the sport reached Spain in the late 1800s, they called it by the English name, only later changing it to “balompié.” But by around 1930, the Royal Spanish Academy accepted the term “fútbol” instead as the official name.

The sport would quickly become the most popular in the world, moving unimaginable amounts of money, being watched by millions of fans, and creating a culture unlike any other. Since many of the best players and teams come from Spanish-speaking countries, such as Argentina, Spain, and Uruguay, it’s common to see the word “fútbol” just as much as its English counterpart. 

American football

Now let’s talk about an entirely different sport. American Football is also a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field, but it is played with an oval-shaped ball that is passed around with the hands, and there are no rectangular goals but goalposts at each end of the field. Points are scored primarily by advancing the ball into the opposing team’s end zone for a touchdown or kicking the ball through the opponent’s goalposts for a field goal. The team with the most points at the end of a game wins.

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The game originated in the United States in 1869, with its rules based on those of soccer at the time. The name “football” was established in 1876 when the sport shifted to having rugby-styled rules. So it became a combination of the two sports, with heavy influence from the British. As for Canada, the name is used inclusively for Canadian Football, with American and Canadian football generally seen as two variants of the same sport.

It is the most popular sport in the United States in terms of broadcast viewership, and nearly 1.1 million high-school athletes and 70,000 college athletes play the sport in the United States annually. Its championship game, the Super Bowl, ranks among the most-watched club sporting events in the world. The league has an annual revenue of around US$15 billion, making it the most valuable sports league in the world. However, its hasn’t matched the popularity of soccer worldwide and has stayed primarily in the US.