Association Football

Never heard of association football? We Americans know it better as soccer. In the 1860s the game was known as association football to distinguish the sport from other forms of football, such as rugby football. Contrary to British snickering, the word “soccer” originated as the first British abbreviation of association football. When Rugby football logically dropped the football, fans of soccer in the UK and throughout the world ultimately adopted football as the name for the game. But soccer had already stuck in America, Australia, and Canada.

American soccer fans are so often dismissed abroad simply because we chose to call the game by a different name that the little known origin of the term soccer conveys an important message: the game’s roots in this country are not so shallow. We chose Association Football for the name of this blog because we believe Americans get the game just as well as others around the world.

In writing this blog we hope to provide insight and analysis, assess the growth of the game in America, and discuss international soccer’s place in world society and culture. Soccer is mainly covered online in the U.S., and we seek to add another voice to that growing community targeting fans looking for an in depth debate about the strategy, tactics, and nuances of the beautiful game.

As two opinionated progressive policy wonks in Washington DC, we hope to add interesting and informative commentary. We cover the US men’s national team, American players abroad, Premier League, MLS, the state of soccer in the U.S., and anything else of interest in the world of soccer.