A couple of weeks ago, took place in Istanbul, Europe’s Champion’s League final Football (Soccer) game which saw Manchester City winning the trophy for the first time, beating Italy’s Inter-Milan. This post, however, is not about the match, which I found to be relatively boring, but it is a piece of ‘thought’ about the global sport of Football compared to American Football (or Canadian, for that matter).
The first puzzle is why do you call American Football, ‘Football’ to begin with? Sure players use their feet to run, but there is very little done with the feet, other than running. I am, of course, well aware of punting, field goals, and kick-offs done by feet, but most of the game the ball is used by hands. The second question is about the name Soccer. Where did it come from?
For both questions, we have to go back to the late 19th century, and the arrival of Rugby and Football from England to the US. As it has often been the case, the elite Northeastern universities, such as Yale, Princeton, and even Harvard picked up the two sports. I guess they were bored out of their minds, and needed something to distract them.
But as it is generally the case of the American spirit, I guess, they did not want to keep a ‘foreign’ sport, so they developed a game which they considered to an improved synthesis of the two sports. It was originally called Gridiron Football, which with time had the gridiron dropped and simply became Football. But now we had a problem, how do we distinguish between this Football and the other Football?
That’s where history helps. You see, originally, in the motherland of England, Football was called Association Football and apparently, Rugby was called Rugby Football. So initially, in England, both games had the word ‘football’ in them because they were both kicking games. Initially to score in Rugby you had to kick the ball across the line, no carrying.
As time went on, carrying the ball across the line became dominant, and with time, people being tired of mentioning every time the distinction between Association Football and Rugby Football, just called one ‘Football’ (more legitimate) and simply ‘Rugby’, the other one. As for Soccer, it comes from the fact that when it was called association football, the newspapers got tired of using the long name, so they shortened it to ‘assoc’, then ‘soc’, which then gave birth to Soccer. And by the way, it took almost 40 years for forward passing to be allowed in American Football, which distinguishes the game from Rugby. Once again, America moves forward with changes and England sticks with traditions. I, nevertheless, believe Football is a more appropriate name for Soccer than it is for American Football.
Paris, June 22, 2023
Zeejay