Originally Posted by wikipedia Football is more commonly known as soccer in certain English-speaking nations where the word "football" refers to a rival code of football developed within that nation, specifically Australia, Canada, Ireland and the United States, and also in areas where Rugby football is more popular than association football, such as Australia, New Zealand and the white communities of South Africa. In these countries "football" was often included in the names of the earliest leagues and governing bodies of the sport, but as that word became increasingly associated with other domestic form of the game so soccer became more widely used.
In the United States, the sport's governing body is the United States Soccer Federation. This body was originally called the U.S. Football Association, and was formed in 1913 by the merger of the American Football Association and the American Amateur Football Association. The word "soccer" was added to the name in 1945, making it the U.S. Soccer Football Association, and it did not drop the word "football" until 1974, when it assumed its current name. Today, "soccer" is the standard name for the sport in the United States, with "football" referring instead to American football.
A few Australian authorities, such as the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) have always used the name "football". In 2004, the Australian Soccer Association changed its name to Football Federation Australia, and announced that the official name of the sport in Australia will now be "football". This has been met with controversy and/or bemusement by followers of Australian rules football and rugby league, the most popular forms of "football" in Australia. Nevertheless some media outlets in some areas have accepted the usage.
In Canada, "football" is reserved for Canadian football, in both of its national languages. The usage of "soccer" is so uniform that even in Quebec the game is known as le soccer and the provincial governing body is the Fédération de Soccer du Québec.
In Ireland, Gaelic football is also played but nonetheless the governing bodies for soccer are the Football Association of Ireland, in the Republic of Ireland, and the similarly titled Irish Football Association in Northern Ireland. Many Irish people refer to both codes simply as "football" while reserving the terms "soccer" and Gaelic for occasions when context cannot resolve any ambiguity.
The use of "soccer" in South Africa is common to white speakers of both English and Afrikaans. However, black communities generally use "football", and the country's national association is called the South African Football Association. The Afrikaans word for the sport is sokker.
Outside of these countries the word "soccer" has not been commonly used and "football" remains by far the most common name to describe the sport, being the name officially used by both FIFA, the sport's world governing body, and the International Olympic Committee. However, the use of "soccer" is on the rise, perhaps due to the global influence of American culture on the English language.
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