Talk:Association football
(Redirected from Talk:Football (soccer))
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I've never heard of this sport being called association football.
The term association football is the original name for the sport. FIFA's name in English is International Association Football Federation. However, its usage has diminished in recent years, with different cultures developing their own word(s) for the sport. Even the word soccer derives from the
"soc" in association. Why not just football?
This is because there are several sports that are known as football in different countries. For example, in the United States, American football is primarily referred to as football, while the same is true of Gaelic football in Ireland, Canadian football in Canada, rugby union in New Zealand, and rugby league or Australian rules football in Australia. The title association football avoids any ambiguity over which code of football is being referred to, and also removes the potential for accusations of bias towards any particular code. Meanwhile, the Football page is a "broad-concept article", providing a general overview of all of the sports named football. Why not soccer then?
In the United Kingdom, the usage of the term soccer, a term which originated in South East England (before being popularised in the United States), is sometimes viewed as being derogatory towards the sport, or an example of American culture being forced onto the rest of the world. Therefore, although the word soccer would be an unambiguous title for this article, there would be discontent from a large number of people who object to their word for the sport being ignored. Others point to soccer being the most widely used name for the sport in English-speaking nations – however the statistics for this are not readily available or are confusing (e.g. India is the largest country with English as an official language and refers to the game as football, but English is not the primary language for most Indians) and others where countries change their official name for the sport (as Australia have done by now referring to the sport as football, renaming Soccer Australia to Football Federation Australia and changing the local associations' names to reflect this, whilst the general populace still refers to the game as soccer). What about "Football (soccer)" or "Soccer (football)"?
On Wikipedia, the placing of a word in parentheses in the title of an article is used as a method of disambiguation, with the parenthesized word usually being a set of which the article's subject is a part. Therefore, using either of these titles implies that football is a form of soccer or vice versa, which is not the case. Using "Association football" as the title of this article is permissible under Wikipedia's practice of using natural disambiguation in article titles. |
 | This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
 | Association football is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed. | ||||||||||||||||||
 | This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on November 20, 2006. | ||||||||||||||||||
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 | This  level-3 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 | This article has previously been nominated to be moved. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination.
Discussions Please see the FAQ above and the related naming subpage detailing the extensive move discussions. All discussions regarding the article title should be posted there. Older discussions
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Proposal to move the name to Football
[edit]The term "Association football" is outright way too formal and should be moved to the more common term "Football (not to be confused with American football)" so it should likely be moved. ~2026-28450-01 (talk) 04:36, 11 May 2026 (UTC)
- No. There are far more codes of football than just soccer and American football. HiLo48 (talk) 04:39, 11 May 2026 (UTC)
Semi-protected edit request on 24 May 2026
[edit] | This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
I request for where it says "soccer" to be changed to "soccer (abbreviation of 'association')" please. ~2026-31299-55 (talk) 22:59, 24 May 2026 (UTC)
- Why? HiLo48 (talk) 00:53, 25 May 2026 (UTC)
Not done: No reason was given for the proposed change, and the instance of "soccer" that should be replaced was not specified. The etymology of the word "soccer" is already explained in the "Name" section. Day Creature (talk) 16:55, 25 May 2026 (UTC)
soccer
[edit]Calling football "soccer" is a disgrace; this could only come from the United States. ~2026-34610-63 (talk) 23:38, 12 June 2026 (UTC)
- Or Australia, or South Africa, or Canada, or many other places neither you nor I know about. HiLo48 (talk) 06:19, 13 June 2026 (UTC)
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