Why Do Americans Use The Word ‘Soccer?’
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This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids from Vermont Public Radio. I'm Jane Lindholm. Every episode, we take one of the questions that you asked, and we find someone cool to answer it. Today's question is about sports, but really, it's more about language and culture. Hey, Trev, this way. Yeah, turn quick. In the feet. Yeah, shub.

Do you hear that sound? Do you know what it is? It's the sound of a bunch of football players practicing. Oh wait, I said football.

In the rest of the world, that would be right. But if you live in the United States, you'd probably call it soccer. Well, one of you wondered why. My name is Kayla. I am seven years old and I live in Colchester, Vermont. My question is, why is soccer called soccer instead of being called football?

Hello Kayla, this is David Sayward, the men's soccer coach down at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, and I'm really happy to be talking to you today. It's a really interesting question because so many people around the world play the game of football. What happened with the word soccer and football, it goes back to the 1800s when the game was developed.

and there were two groups of people in Britain who got together to set the rules of two different games, one that was known as rugby football and another that was known as association football. And from those two first words, rugby and association, came two very separate games. And so rugby actually became abbreviated to the word rugger,

And out of the word association came the word soccer. And that really is the root of where the two differences came. Have you ever seen the sport of rugby? It's pretty different from soccer. For one thing, you're allowed to catch the ball and carry it, run with it. In soccer, you aren't allowed to touch the ball with your hands unless you're the goalie or you're throwing the ball in from out of bounds.

But as Coach Sayward was saying, both rugby and soccer are different forms of football sports, or at least they were when they were first invented. Rugby football and association football. Association football is what we now call soccer. Think of how association is spelled. There's an S-O-C in there, association. And people shortened that word into soccer. So instead of saying association, you'd just say soccer.

So then the two different forms of football were nicknamed "rugger" and "soccer." What's kind of ironic here is that the word "soccer" came from Great Britain. And these days, you'd probably never hear someone in England or Wales say "soccer." They just call it "football." But Americans brought the British word "soccer" over to this country, and as the sport became more popular, soccer stuck.

Coach Sayward says there's good reason for it sticking. It helps differentiate soccer from other sports. When you look around the world, there are all sorts of different forms of football. So there's American football, there's soccer,

Australian rules football, there's Gaelic football, there's rugby football and then there's association football. So for the clarity of everybody over here, I think that where we say the word football, we tend to think of people running around with helmets and pads on.

and so soccer is a very clear distinction. As you might be able to pick up from his accent, Coach Sayward grew up in England, so he grew up playing football. But for the last 30 years, he's been coaching the sport in the U.S. and calling it soccer. I've gotten into the routine of calling it soccer now, but when I go back to Britain or back into Europe, I actually fall back into calling it football. It's like two different languages. But I think soccer works very well over here.

Like a lot of coaches, David Sayward started first as a player. That's where he developed a love for the game. We used to play all the time with friends over in the park. It was a simple game, a cheap game. We needed a ball and not much else. So television didn't really cover the game, but I was born close to a ground. It's the classic story in Europe where distances are much smaller. I was two miles from a professional team and used to go with my father everywhere.

Watched it, dreamt of being a pro one day, was never quite good enough and decided that I would like to become a teacher. Didn't really know that I would end up coaching the game but it's been my life now for the last 35 years and it's been fantastic. Coach Sayward said he always dreamed of being a professional player but he didn't quite make it.

One of the cool things about him, though, is that he found a way to make a career working in soccer, even though he wasn't a professional player. He coached the Middlebury College team for more than 30 years. Since we first aired this episode back in 2017, though, Coach Sayward has retired. Coming up, we'll hear from other players who've made a career in soccer. Or is it football?

This is But Why, a podcast for curious kids. I'm Jane Lindholm. We're talking about soccer today, or maybe you call it football where you live. And now we're going to learn how some people make a career out of soccer, including my brother. He is now the interim athletic director at a college in New York, but for many years he worked for different major league soccer teams and coached college soccer.

My name is David Lindholm, and I worked for Chivas USA and the Colorado Rapids. I was in the communications department, which meant that it was my job to talk to media members from TV and radio stations, newspapers, and websites about the team, and also to help them interview players and coaches.

I did my work in two languages, because lots of players were from countries where Spanish is the main language. Sometimes I translated interviews, so if a player said something like "El equipo jugó un buen partido esta noche y yo era muy feliz marcar el gol", I would tell the journalist that he said that the team had played a good game and that he was very happy to have scored the goal. I was always with the team, including when we traveled across the country to play games.

It's always much harder to win in the other team's stadium than your own, and so when we did, we would come back to the hotel in such a good mood. The post-game team dinners on those nights when everyone was eating together and laughing, having worked so hard to get the result that we wanted, those were my favorite moments working in professional soccer. So there are a lot of different ways to have a career in sports, even if you don't wind up being a professional player.

but we did get messages from a couple of players who had very successful professional careers.

Hey guys, my name is Alejandro Moreno. I'm originally from Venezuela, a country down in South America. I wanted to share with you a couple of my favorite moments as a professional soccer player. The first one took place down in South America in a tournament called Copa América that brings all the countries from South America together to play for a big, big, huge, humongous trophy.

It's a very important competition and Venezuela wasn't supposed to do all that well because we had to play against very talented teams with very big names like Neymar from Brazil and of course Lionel Messi from Argentina. But our team, we worked very hard, we believed in each other, we trusted each other and

And we made it as far as our country had ever made it in the tournament. We went all the way to the semifinals and made our country very happy and very proud. And we were very proud of the work that we had done. The second moment that I wanted to share with

you was winning MLS Cup in 2008 with the Columbus Crew. I was fortunate enough to win it in 2002 with the LA Galaxy and 2006 with the Houston Dynamo. But in 2008, the game was 0-0 and a player by the name Guillermo Barros-Queloto, he played a ball down the sidelines. I was able to get that ball. I faced up the defender, dribbled past the

with speed, got my head up, tried to find the far post with a nice powerful low shot that got past the goalkeeper and we were up 1-0 and as I turned and I heard the roar of the crowd and I saw my teammates trying to chase me down and I looked up in the stands, the first people that I saw in the stands were my lovely wife Melissa, my kids Gregory and Alejandro

and my parents who had flown all the way from Venezuela to watch me play in a big, big moment. That was a significant moment. That meant a lot to me and to my family. And that was my last championship in Major League Soccer. These days, you can find Alejandro Moreno calling soccer games on TV in English and in Espanol.

Another guy you might see on TV also sent us a message. My name is Alexi Lawless, and I used to play soccer professionally and for the United States many, many years ago back in the 1900s, probably before many of you were even alive. And now I talk about soccer on television.

Alexi Lalas played professionally for many years. He played in the World Cup in 1994. In addition to playing for the U.S. national team for many years, he played for a team in Italy. And then he was one of the key players in the early years of the professional league I mentioned earlier. It's known as MLS.

Later on, Alexi Lalas was in charge of a couple of soccer teams. And yes, I call it soccer. I call it soccer because that's what I grew up calling it. I grew up doing many of the same things that you probably do. I grew up with mom and dad coaching and orange peels and juice boxes at halftime and travel teams and all of these different things that are part of growing up in the United States playing soccer.

And it introduced me to a game that I love and a game that's still a huge part of my life now. Now, a lot of people will ask me, what's your advice to kids who love the sport? And it's pretty simple. This is what I tell them. If you're the best player on your team, you need to find a better team. Because the only way that you ever get better at any sport, or let's be honest, at anything in life, is testing yourself against better competition.

So, if you're the best player on your team, congratulations. But if you want to get better, you've got to find a better team. And that advice is coming from a pro.

Thanks today to Alexi Lalas and Alejandro Moreno for their insight and to Coach David Sayward and the Middlebury College men's team and to my brother, David Lindholm. And thanks to Kayla for the great question. If you have a question about anything, have an adult help you record it using a smartphone and then send the file to questions at butwhykids.org. Be sure to tell us your first name and how old you are and where you're from.

But Why is produced by Melody Beaudet and me, Jane Lindholm, for Vermont Public Radio. Our theme music is by Luke Reynolds. And we're distributed by PRX. We'll be back in two weeks with an all-new episode. Until then, stay curious. From PRX.