Does the rest of the English speaking world generally understand what an American means when they say "soccer", or does it help to clarify by adding "football"?

drcouzelis@lemmy.zip to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 105 points –

If I'm talking to an English speaker from outside of the US, is there any confusion if I say "soccer"?

For example, when I was in college a friend asked for a "torch". I was confused for quite some time, because I didn't know it was another word for "flashlight". Does the same thing happen with the word "soccer"? Should I clarify by saying, "...or football"?

Thank you!

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I’m going to call them soccer football and American football from now on

I'm going to be an insufferable pedant and reply, "Do you mean association football or rugby football?" whenever anyone uses either :P

I refer to Soccer the football played with your foot and then the American version as " Egg-ball" played with your hands.

That said I'm also Canadian and for many years in our small "hand egg-ball" league we had 2 teams with very similar club names called the Rough Riders and the Roughriders so I shouldn't be throwing so many stones...

For a while, the governing body in the US was the United State Soccer Football Association, so you're good, and it's also some good trolling of the zealots on either side of the "debate."