I'm seventeen, In America, that enjoys playing and watching soccer, I just blew your mind :)

EDIT: I'll laugh if the US beats England today XD

Nooo.... what's important is that both sports existed before rules were codified.

What you are doing is taking the rules for Assosiation Football... and trying to apply them backwords through time to Football.

Which is asinine.

Since both forms of Football existed before Football was codified and therefore defined... both ARE Football... as is anything that comes from them.

Also everything isn't called Rugby BECAUSE IT'S FOOTBALL.

It was always called Football.  Rugby was added EXACTLY HOW ASSOSIATION was added.

It's rugby FOOTBALL.  Just like assosiation FOOTBALL.  Same difference.  That's the grouping.

France VS Italy in the finals last year drew 17 million.  You'd have to think most of those people would be interested in seeing our actual country playing.

ESPN really has doen a full out blitz in the last year or so.  Been getting a few preimier and champions league games a month now.  One or two a weekend.

Which is another problem towards US accepteance by the way.

We want to watch the best.  Which means well, watching The Premier/Champions league which mostly plays at times the US people can't watch, and addition there is no hometown loyalties.

America likes manly sports. Grabbing men is much more manly than playing soccer.

Or to put things another way about Codification....  I'll put it in another context to get past your biases.

Think about it like political parties.

Say you have a "Workers party" and have a bunch of members... but no set plank or set ideals yet.

Then one group says "We are the People's Workers Party.... these are our beliefs!"

While another group later says "We are the Workers Party of England.... these are our beliefs."

Which is the TRUE Workers party?   Either Neither or Both.  Neither has a greater claim then the other?

You definitly can't say "it's the Peoples workers party.... otherwise why aren't both parties called England!"  or vice versa with People.  That's silly.

You can't say one is more "Wokers party" then the other, because both existed as that entitity before any strict definitions were formed.

And that's why the world hates Americans. What gives you the impressions that Americans are so good at sport?

Oh no! The whole world hates us? What will we ever do? Replace hate with jealousy, and you've got it right. Oh yeah, get rid of that retarted off-sides rule and score some goals, maybe we'll watch.

HERE IN MEXICO AND ALL OF SOUTH AMERICA WE SAY FUTBOL

Soccer is boring to most Americans.  Why?  Because we don't watch the game; we don't understand what's going on, on the field; and any sport you don't understand is essentially boring because you can't follow the story of the action.  It's a self-sustaining cycle--if we watched it, we'd come to understand more and thereby enjoy it.  It's unfortunate it's so hard to change, but there it is.

It's the same thing with my father and baseball: he's followed it all his life and he understands the nuances.  I don't.  I find baseball boring, but that's more on account of my understanding of it than the game itself.

On naming, it all seems so dumb to me.  Why should I care what people in Germany call the sport that I've known all my life as soccer?  And why should they care what I call it?  I mean, it's not like I refer to their country as Deutschland; different cultures, different languages, different traditions, etc.  So long as we can communicate (which we can), I guess we can deal with the fact that we call our different games by the same name w/o pretending like it's some sort of "arrogance" on Americans' parts to call soccer, "soccer."

The rules there for a reason it's too stop someone from just standing there and waiting for the ball too come to them, If you got rid of the rule it'd be a rather silly contest tbh and rather boring. And americans don't have the consentration span to watch a 90 minute game with only one break.