Donald Trump jokes about passing executive order to relabel ‘soccer’ to ‘football’ in USA; Soccer is an Oxford University British coinage

“They call it football, we call it soccer. I’m not sure if that change can be made very easily,” Trump told her first up. After Ms Austin wondered if he could issue an executive order instead so only the word football is used, the US president guffawed and replied: “I think we could do that.”

USA has a few slightly more urgent matters to attend to, so ‘soccer’ might yet survive. But it drew attention to the serendipitous route the words have taken – always influenced by the presence of a more popular rival sport.

Encyclopedia Britannica notes that the term “soccer” originated in England as a slang abbreviation of “association football.” After the formation of the Football Association in late 1800s, the rules of football, were slotted in stone by “Association Football.” However, not the most interesting variety of kicking the ball with the foot, it faced jostles from other football codes, like rugby. That’s when Oxford University students coined the term “soccer” as a casual, shortened version, using the “soc” from “association” and adding the “-er” suffix common in Oxford campus slang.

So, soccer set itself apart from rugger.

Britannica writes, “Although football-type games have been around for centuries, the sport we know today is often said to have begun in 1863, when England’s newly formed Football Association wrote down a set of rules. At the time, it was the most widely played game of its kind in the country, but it wasn’t the only one. Rugby football, named after an English boarding school, was a rebellious variation that allowed players to carry and run with the ball to advance it toward the goal.” So, the football of Pirlo, Canavaro, Gigi Buffon, Big Brazilian Ronaldo, Gatusso, del Piero, Gerrard, Raul Gonzalez Blanco, Miroslav Klose and the great Juan Roman Riquelme was called by the Football Association’s as association football.

Britannica further mentions that linguistically creative students at the University of Oxford in the 1880s distinguished between the sports of “rugger” (rugby football) and “assoccer” (association football). “The latter term was further shortened to “soccer” (sometimes spelled “socker”), and the name quickly spread beyond the campus. However, “soccer” never became much more than a nickname in Great Britain. By the 20th century, rugby football was more commonly called rugby, while association football had earned the right to be known as just plain football.”

Onto the United States where the womens team salvages ineptness of the men, and actually wins World Cups.

Another sport, Britannica says, emerged in the late 19th century that borrowed elements of both rugby and association football. “Before long, it had proved more popular than either of them. In full, it was known as gridiron football, but most people never bothered with the first word.” So Anerican football came into being.

Cornered by yet another mire popular sport, American association-football players defiantly adopted soccer to refer to their sport. “The United States Football Association, which had formed in the 1910s as the official organizing body of American soccer, changed its name to the United States Soccer Football Association in 1945, and it later dispensed with the “Football” altogether. No longer just a nickname, soccer had stuck,” Britannica writes.

Football, of the Buffon kinds, also faced competition from gridiron football in Canada, Gaelic football in Ireland and Australian rules football (which is derived from rugby). “In places where football can be ambiguous, soccer is usefully precise,” Britannica writes.

Thus was sulkingly born soccer. Which might need a presidential decree to lose its British slang name in the lead up to next year’s World Cup.

The real issues facing football in US however are quality of playing turf, humid hot temperatures and American general disinterest.