Solving Mysteries

From Mia Cope

At first glance at the photo above, you might think that Daddy and I are celebrating Spain’s recent victory over Argentina to take home the coveted 2026 World Cup. We’re not.

The truth is we didn’t really care who won and wouldn’t have known who was playing in the finals had it not been for daily updates from Momma. She reminded us almost daily that she was pulling for Argentina because of a guy named Messi. Daddy found that a little upsetting since over the span of 52 years of marriage she has often called him “Messy” and not in such an adoring way.

So why were Daddy and I celebrating with our high-fives and exuberant expressions?

It’s because we finally solved the mystery of why we call football “soccer” in the United States while the rest of the world calls it football. You probably already know why. But because Daddy and I basically couldn’t care less, we never thought to ask.

Many people believe that the label “soccer” was coined by Americans because we weren’t very clever and couldn’t come up with an original name for the game we call football. Also, the renaming made sense to us since the central theme of soccer is kicking a soccer ball or batting it around with your head or basically any part of your body that isn’t your hand regardless of how painful that might be.¹ Along the same lines, the American game is all about moving a much more unlikely shaped ball up and down a field. And the American ball is actually called a “football.” ²

But through intense research in an old Britannica encyclopedia, Daddy and I discovered that the term “soccer” was actually first used in Great Britain to distinguish between soccer and rugby.³

Our intense learning experience didn’t end there. The sport of rugby was named for a British boarding school where it was played.⁴ Clever lads and perhaps lassies at the University of Oxford, as part of an advanced linguistics course, came up with a new name for the sport, calling it “rugger.” Meanwhile, football played with a soccer ball was named “assoccer.” Purportedly, because soccer football played by the rules of the Football ASSOCiation was called “association football” in politer circles. Daddy thinks they called it assoccer for reasons more in keeping with Footnote 1. Somebody else must have thought the same thing, as they later shortened it to “soccer.”

So in answer to the mystery I’ve been weaving here, Daddy and I were celebrating because the good ol’ USA had nothing to do with the whole “soccer” vs. “football” controversy. Finally, something we can’t be blamed for.

We don’t even have a soccer ball at Casa de Togo. This picture of the late, great Togo might explain why.

Personally, I would like to commend all of those who play soccer. It demands a lot of skill and great athleticism. Daddy says that the players also have to be really smart to understand what it means to be offside. And Daddy’s inability to comprehend that, coupled with his childhood trauma experiences, explains why all of this is more of a mystery than it should be.

1. Daddy explained that he played soccer during his grade school recess periods. The only rule in West Texas was that you couldn’t use your hands. The only object of the game seemed to be inflicting pain on members of the opposing team because of that rule. Daddy added that it really didn’t matter if it was a member of the opposing team. Satisfaction was hearing the thump of the ball and seeing someone go down in a cloud of dust. (This was West Texas. We didn’t play on grass.)

2. In fairness, Europeans also call a soccer ball a “football.”

3. The rugby ball is just called a “ball” and thus the burning question: “Why isn’t the sport of rugby called simply ‘ball?’”

4. More intense research reveals that the school was named “Rugby School” and was in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire, England.