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Comment by animal531 | Hacker News Reader

People keep complaining about this when it's really not a thing, and it has nothing to do with the USA.

For example in European-ish countries it's called Calcio (to kick) in Italy, Nogomet (leg) in Boznia/Croatia, mappa (ball) in Cyprus, labdarugas officially (ball-kicking) in Hungary.

There's another 8 or so countries where it's called another form of kick/ball/leg/something etc.

Finally it's called soccer in about 15 countries, of which the USA is only 1, where almost none of them have another variant of football.

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The name "calcio" is ubiquitous in Italy, but the "Football" term is very common, where it is part of the official name of many clubs, e.g. Juventus Football Club.

And in many languages a word directly derived from "Football" is common to refer to the game.

Forza Juve!

And in my town and many in the US. The clubs are named "Football Club" while the majority of society calls it soccer. There's simply no other way to distinguish between the sports other than using the term soccer. I'm open for any suggestions that don't also involve changing the name of the most popular sport here.

I'm certainly not suggesting that Americans should change the name of their sport. It is just good natured ribbing :).

Where do you see people complaining? It was just pointing out a wired naming scheme and asking a question.

For the sake of the argument, let's narrow the scope down to English-speaking countries...

Why not count by English-speaking people? Of whom almost half are North American (US+Canada) and would call it "Soccer", and then so do the Australians, Irish, and several others.

https://www.businessinsider.com/football-vs-soccer-map-2013-...

For the sake of the argument, let's also include the Global South for a second: The Indians, the Pakistanis, the Bangladeshis, the Kenyans, and the Nigerians who call it football.

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