Mystery solved: Don’t blame the Americans! The real origin of the word ‘soccer’

[Yavin4]

Interesting.

https://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blogs/the-rio-report/mystery-solved-don-t-blame-usa-real-reason-123344142.html

[JonLP24]

1. I never thought much about it

I always figured it was widely used here to distinguish from American football.

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"From this point onwards the two versions of football were distinguished by reference to their longer titles, Rugby Football and Association Football (named after the Football Association)," Szymanski writes. "The rugby football game was shortened to 'rugger,'" while "the association football game was, plausibly, shortened to 'soccer.'"

Both sports fragmented yet again as they spread around the world. The colloquialism "soccer" caught on in the United States in the first decade of the twentieth century, in part to distinguish the game from American football, a hybrid of Association Football and Rugby Football. (Countries that tend to use the word "soccer" nowadays—Australia, for example—usually have another sport called "football.&quot

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/why-we-call-soccer-soccer/372771/