Donald Trump has entered the long-running argument over whether the word ‘football’ should refer to soccer or American football. He revived the debate last year while speaking at the 2026 FIFA World Cup draw in Washington, DC, joking that Americans might need to rethink what they call the sport played with their feet.
Across much of the world, the sport played mainly with the feet is simply known as ‘football’. In the United States, however, that same game is typically called ‘soccer’, while the hand-dominant sport featuring passing, rushing, and tackling is the one labelled ‘football’.
That difference in terminology has sparked plenty of debate over the years, with supporters of both games often defending their preferred name. Trump’s comments added a fresh twist by suggesting that the NFL, rather than soccer, might be the sport that needs a new label.
As the United States prepares to co-host the 2026 FIFA World Cup with Canada and Mexico, soccer’s profile in the country continues to rise, helped by major events such as the 2024 Copa América and the 2025 Club World Cup.
“When you look what has happened to football in the United States, again soccer in the United States, we seem to never call it that, because we have a little bit of a conflict with another thing that’s called football,” the president said, according to vt.
“But when you think about it, shouldn’t it really called, this is football, there’s no question, we have to come up with another name for the NFL. It really doesn’t make sense when you think about it, it is really football.”
Trump made similar remarks during the World Cup draw, saying of soccer: “This is football.” He also said the U.S. would have a hard time changing the NFL’s name, since American football is already deeply embedded in the country’s sports culture.
Strictly speaking, neither football nor soccer is the sport’s full title, as it is formally known as ‘Association Football’.
It remains comfortably the world’s most popular sport, played in nearly every corner of the globe. Cricket is generally considered the next biggest, thanks in large part to its enormous following in countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.
American football, meanwhile, still holds its place as the most popular sport in the US, where the NFL is the dominant professional league and the word ‘football’ is closely tied to that version of the game.
The naming divide becomes even more interesting when you look beyond English. In Portuguese, spoken in football-mad Brazil, the sport is called ‘futebol’, pronounced ‘foo-chi-bol’. In Spanish, soccer is ‘fútbol’, while American football is referred to as ‘fútbol americano’.
Although many people now associate the word ‘soccer’ with the US, the term did not actually originate there. According to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, the word developed from the sport’s official name, Association Football.
Back in the 1880s, Oxford University students reportedly shortened ‘rugby’ to ‘rugger’. Association Football was first trimmed to ‘assoccer’, which was later shortened again to ‘soccer’.
Today, the debate is less about language history than everyday usage: around the world, most countries call the sport football, while in the U.S. soccer remains the common term to avoid confusion with the NFL.