It's Not Socker, Or Soccer, Or Socca, It's Football!

Global variations of "football" and "soccer."

The United States was recently eliminated from the 2014 World Cup in an unbelievably exciting 2-1 extra time loss to Belgium, a country smaller than the state of Maryland. The amount of American heart and spirit poured into the game was unquestionable, it's the lack of technical talent (Tim Howard completely excluded) that usually prevents the US national team from advancing into the round of eight. The lack of talent on the team stems from a lack of national interest in the sport. And, I believe, disinterest in this global sport is deeply rooted in a single word; in fact, it might be the most boring word in all of the languages of the world: soccer. 

Imagine if the NFL never adopted the name football, and was instead known as the National Soccer League. The quarterbacks and linesmen are no longer known as heroic football players, but simply as soccer players playing in the NSL. Phonologically, "soccer" is an atrocious word for your ears to lamely absorb. This may be partially (or completely) due to soccer's nonsensical etymological roots. In the mid 1800's two major sports were born in England, one was Rugby Football, the other was Association Football. The former disassociated itself from the word football and became, simply: Rugby. Similarly, the brilliant people over at Association Football were looking to abbreviate their multi-syllabic sport into something simpler to say, so they abbreviated Association. They couldn't settle with the first three letters of Association (Ass.) for fear of making their newfound sport come off as utterly ridiculous, so they shifted over a couple of letters and came up with: soc. This is combined with the fact that it was colloquially typical for English University students at the time to end some of their jargon with an -er at the end. "Sock-er," or "soccer" was born. Football and soccer were interchangeable words in England up through the 1980's, when they began rejecting the term because of soccer's rising popular in America. The English let the Americans keep "soccer" while they switched back over to the infinitely more euphonic word: football. 

This semantic anecdote allows you to recognize that "soccer" is based in bullshit. "Soccer" is ugly. America's young, elite athletes want to play American football and basketball, not "soccer." In order to attract young prospective talent and one day advance deeper into the World Cup tournament, Americans need to obliterate the word "soccer." The ugliest word in the world needs to be linguistically erased from the American lexicon. Let's get rid of the word. Soccer moms, you are no longer a soccer mom, you are a football mom. It's not sock-er, or soccer, or sokker, it's FOOTBALL!