President Donald Trump just dropped a cultural bombshell that’s got sports fans buzzing from coast to coast. At a high-profile event in Washington, D.C., he suggested renaming soccer to "football" in the United States, poking at a debate older than the goalposts themselves. It’s a classic Trump move—bold, divisive, and guaranteed to get people talking.
During the World Cup 2026 drawing at the Kennedy Center on Friday afternoon, Trump made his case for the name change while also being honored as the inaugural recipient of the FIFA Peace Prize, the New York Post reported.
This isn’t just about a word; it’s about identity, tradition, and how Americans define their games. Trump’s proposal, met with hearty applause egged on by FIFA President Gianni Infantino, a close ally, suggests we need a new label for the NFL’s version of football. It’s a fair point—why should a sport with minimal foot-to-ball contact hog the name?
“When you look at what has happened to football in the United States, [or ‘soccer’ in the United States, we seem to never call it that because we have a little bit of a conflict with another thing that’s called ‘football,’” Trump declared. Let’s unpack that: he’s not wrong about the confusion, but convincing NFL diehards to rebrand their sacred sport might be tougher than a goal-line stand.
Trump didn’t stop there, doubling down on his logic with a jab at the status quo. “But when you think about it, shouldn’t it really be called, I mean, this is football, there’s no question about that,” he added. If we’re honest, the man’s got a knack for pointing out the absurdities we’ve all just accepted.
Still, this isn’t a new fight—it’s a generational tug-of-war over language. Some blame America for twisting the sport’s name into "soccer," but the roots of this linguistic mess actually trace back to England. Who knew the British, of all people, might be the real culprits?
According to Stefan Szymanski, a sports management professor at the University of Michigan, the term "soccer" was born in England, not America. In the early 1800s, football and rugby were just different flavors of the same rough-and-tumble game. By 1863, the Football Association in England laid down formal rules, separating it from rugby, which got its own union in 1871.
The confusion among English schoolboys led to quirky slang, with "rugger" for rugby and "soccer" for association football. It was, as Szymanski notes, a trendy habit at Oxford and Cambridge to slap "er" on words. Sounds like the kind of elitist wordplay we’d roll our eyes at today.
Fast forward to wartime, when American troops in Europe picked up "soccer" as the go-to term. Its popularity waxed and waned with the ups and downs of U.S.-U.K. relations, hitting a low in the 1970s amid mutual snubs, per a 2015 Edinburgh University paper. By the 1980s, ties improved, but the British had mostly ditched "soccer" for good.
Today, "soccer" is the norm in the U.S., Canada, and Australia, where other sports already claim the "football" mantle. American football, with its first official game in 1892 according to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, was already taking shape when "soccer" emerged across the pond. It’s no surprise we stuck with separate names—clarity matters when helmets and shoulder pads are involved.
But Szymanski points out a cultural backlash in Britain against "soccer" as the sport grew in American popularity. It’s almost as if the more we embraced it, the more they rejected the term. A classic case of transatlantic sibling rivalry, wouldn’t you say?
Trump’s suggestion isn’t just a whim; it taps into a real inconsistency. Why do we call one sport "football" when the foot barely touches the ball, while the true foot-centric game gets a different name? It’s a question worth kicking around, even if it ruffles some progressive feathers obsessed with keeping things as they are.
Critics will likely frame this as another Trump distraction, but there’s meat on this bone. Language evolves, and if we’re going to champion tradition, let’s at least make it logical. Forcing a rename on the NFL might be a long shot, but the conversation itself is overdue.
At the end of the day, whether you’re Team Soccer or Team Football, Trump’s comments at the Kennedy Center have scored a goal in the court of public opinion. They’ve reignited a debate that’s less about sports and more about how we define ourselves. Maybe it’s time to stop playing defense and pick a side—or at least a name.
So, what’s the play here? Will Americans embrace Trump’s vision, or will this idea get red-carded by tradition? One thing’s for sure: the “beautiful game” just got a whole lot uglier in the naming department, and that’s a match worth watching.
