hsrob said:
No, the fact of the matter is the word soccer was invented by the English to distinguish this sport from other kinds of football. Football being a descriptor for a range of sports using some combination of a foot and ball. As such it is perfectly correct to call the sport either soccer or football or so says the Oxford Dictionary. The advantage of the word soccer is that it is more specific and that's why it tends to be favoured in countries where there a number of popular sports that can be classified as football. |
To add, full name of the sport is Association Football which turned to soccer as a shorthand reference. Rugby Football became Rugger. The Brits have a habit of putting -er to a truncated name to substiute as a colloquial term.