The World Cup is coming to North America: So in 2026, is it ‘football’ or ‘soccer’? – The Athletic
In Gianni Infantino’s Swiss hometown, it is “fußball.” In his family’s homeland, Italy, it is “calcio.” In the official name of the organization he runs, FIFA, it is “association football,” and near their office in South Florida, it is often “fútbol.” But to most Americans, the sport that will charm the United States next summer is “soccer,” and so, when Infantino steps onstage at Friday’s 2026 World Cup draw, or whenever he speaks at this North American tournament, he will have a decision to make.
“Soccer” or “football”?
The question, for years, has been everything from a subject of etymological study to fodder for polarizing debate. It has fascinated professors and fans, puzzled executives and triggered ridiculous rants. It has even inspired playful jokes between American and foreign diplomats. Alex Lasry, a New Yorker who worked for the presidential administrations of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, recalls using the word “soccer” in conversations abroad as a “fun joust.”
But now, he admits, “with the World Cup being here, it probably takes on a more interesting idea.”
Lasry is CEO of New York and New Jersey’s host committee, one of many organizations tasked with selling the 2026 World Cup to locals (many of whom call the sport “soccer”) and welcoming foreigners (most of whom know it as some variation of “football” or “fútbol.”)
So, he says, in promoting the tournament, “I think you’ll see a lot of back and forth.”
“Especially when we’re talking about [the sport] in Europe, and trying to appeal to a different audience, 100%, [there will be some ‘football’],” he adds. “You want to make sure you’re speaking the language that is going to get people excited and brought here.
“But we want to be authentic. I think it would be inauthentic if we tried to pretend that we’re calling it football all the time, because we’re not. In the U.S., it is soccer.”
Most of the local host committees, Lasry and others say, call it “soccer.” Most, but not all. At the Coral Gables hub of Miami’s host committee, down the street from FIFA’s World Cup headquarters, “we’re always going back and forth,” says Janelle Prieto, the host committee’s chief marketing officer. “We all come from all different backgrounds and cultures and ethnicities, and everybody has their own personal convictions behind it.”
Some staffers, she says, have been adamant that it’s “football” or “fútbol” — though none are adamant it’s “soccer.”
“No, not in Miami,” Prieto says with a laugh. As Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava likes to say in Spanish: “Aquí se habla fútbol” — Here we say fútbol. The host committee’s CEO, Alina Hudak, is a longtime fan of the University of Miami’s American football team, “but even she’s drinking the Kool-Aid,” Prieto says.
So there is no easy answer for FIFA. Infantino’s solution, whether in Miami or New York or the White House, has been to repurpose the debate into a corny-yet-funny icebreaker.
“Let’s clarify this, once and for all,” he told a room of world leaders, diplomats and CEOs at the Atlantic Council Global Citizen Awards banquet in September — just as he had, with the exact same charm and delivery, at the first meeting of the White House’s World Cup task force in May; and just as he would onstage at the America Business Forum in November.
“We — meaning all of us outside of this beautiful country — we call football a game that we play with our feet,” Infantino said “That’s why we call it football, right? You, in this beautiful country, you call football a game you play with your hands.” He paused and smiled.
“Now, I don’t know who’s right or who’s wrong,” he continued, holding up his hands as laughter rolled through the audience.
“But, actually, you can call it soccer, you can call it football,” he concluded. “The important [thing] is to enjoy, to have fun, to be happy.”
Fans at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar hang a banner with a decidedly American spin on what to call the sport (Dan Mullan / Getty Images)
Origins of a debate
The origins of the various names for this sport, and the reason most of the world calls it “football,” are actually less clear than many fans assume. The popular explanation is Infantino’s: a game played with feet and a ball, naturally, is football. The alternate explanation dates back to medieval times, when, according to some etymologies, “football” was a game played on foot rather than on horseback.
Either way, in the 1800s, two types of football were codified in England: rugby football and association football. Oxford slang dubbed them rugger and (as)soccer. “Soccer,” therefore, became a common British name for the sport that eventually spread to all corners of the world. It wasn’t until the latter half of the 20th century that “soccer” faded in England. By the 21st, in England and elsewhere, rugby football was “rugby”; and association football had become “football.”
Not in America, though, where a different game played on foot with a ball grew throughout the 1900s. By the time soccer graduated from niche to mainstream more recently, the National Football League (NFL) was already a behemoth. Even college football games attract larger television audiences in the U.S. than any other professional sport. “Everyone recognizes that the NFL has earned the right to call it football here,” says Peter Tomozawa, the CEO of Seattle’s World Cup host committee.
So, soccer remained “soccer.”
“[Growing up], we had one football and one football only,” says Jon Persch, the chief commercial officer of Boston’s World Cup host committee, who spent time in both the American northeast and south.
As the sport, and the world, globalized, and as Americans increasingly connected with the Premier League and international football via TV and digital media, “football” seemingly became more commonplace. Lasry says his Prem-obsessed friends insist on terming it “proper football.” Others feel that the choice, “soccer” vs. “football,” is often made by the speaker to express something about themself.
“If somebody wants to feel very cosmopolitan, you’ll hear Americans refer to it as ‘football,’ knowing full well that they’re talking about soccer,” Persch says. He’ll respond — at least in his own head: “You’re putting your bougie on right now, aren’t ya?”
Some U.S. coaches and players, especially those who’ve spent time abroad, also vacillate between “soccer” and “football.” But in the American mainstream, to the audiences that World Cup organizers hope to attract, “football” is the sport that attracts tens of millions of stateside viewers every fall Sunday. Already this year, six regular-season NFL games have drawn more viewers in the U.S. than the 2022 men’s World Cup final, the most-watched soccer match in U.S. history (26.7 million average viewers). The most recent Super Bowl, with a TV audience of 127.7 million people, was seen by around five times as many.
“I think you have to pay the proper amount of respect and tribute to the brand that the NFL has built here,” Tomozawa says. “I’m quite happy to cede the word ‘football’ to them, because that would reduce the confusion in our particular market.”
Says Meg Kane, leader of Philadelphia’s World Cup host committee: “We are so rooted in an American football culture, given the Philadelphia Eagles, that we have tried to think about how we can have a bit of fun with it — … always respecting American football, but also recognizing that the rest of the world does refer to [soccer] as football.”
Persch — who grew up playing American football, then worked in rugby football, lived in Spain, and is now promoting the world’s football — says Boston will take a similar approach, but admits that the linguistic overlap does, at times, cause genuine confusion.
“As I’ve moved into the world of international sports,” he jokes, “I transpose the word football now, almost exclusively, and sometimes I forget exactly which sport I’m talking about.”
FIFA president Gianni Infantino has little problem interchanging between terms for the sport he governs (Fabrice Coffrini / AFP / Getty Images)
FIFA’s adaptable stance
When Infantino speaks, fortunately, there is rarely confusion. He is almost always talking about the sport whose governing body he runs, no matter what he calls it. For the vast majority of his professional life, he’s called it “football,” but on the eve of the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar, as his brain began drifting toward 2026, he began priming the football world for what was to come. He spoke about “the impact of football — or soccer, as it’s called where we’re going to play the next World Cup,” he said. “We are more than bullish, we are convinced that the impact of the game will be massive.”
Ever since, he has been spending more and more time in the States, and — as he’s done throughout his globetrotting life — has adopted local customs.
“When he’s talking, he’ll correct himself and use the word soccer,” Persch says.
“When I’m with Gianni in the United States,” Lasry notes, “he calls it soccer too.”
He has adapted so thoroughly that when I spoke with him earlier this year, he seemed to wonder if he’d gone too far. “We are here to bring soccer — or football, I don’t know how you call it, but it doesn’t matter — to the entire world,” Infantino said.
He used the two words interchangeably, and humorously, when he addressed the U.S. Soccer Federation’s National Council Meeting via recorded video in March. He uses both in interviews and private conversations.
“He’s trying, [and] everybody’s trying to straddle the line,” Prieto says.
So when he enters a spotlight Friday at the Kennedy Center’s Concert Hall, Infantino will almost certainly use both words. And he will almost certainly use comedy to defuse potential tension and preempt annoyance.
“Tongue-in-cheek,” Kane says, “is a good way to approach this topic.”
