Any follower (however marginal) of football in this country will be aware of the scorn & contempt which is heaped upon Americans for calling the game soccer
It only recently occurred to me to wonder where the name soccer comes from
Lo & behold it could hardly be more English, in the sense that is an abbreviation of Association, & it was the English Football Association, formed in 1863, which codified the modern game
I suspect that the English aversion to the name soccer has its origins, as do so many of these sensitivities, in class
The Oxford Dictionary has the following quote from the Westminster Gazette of 1893:
W. Neilson was elected captain of ‘rugger’ and T. N. Perkins of ‘socker’
I suspect a certain amount of chippiness in the insistence that ‘true’ football is ‘The game as played under Association rules’, not that snooty one played by Public School boys.
