Americans and English people have many things in common. One of these is a shared love of sport. In America, around 60% of the population describe themselves as a “sports fan”, with similar figures in the UK. Brits spend £7 billion each year on partaking in sport, while around 13.6 million people (around 20% of the population) attend Premier League games in person.
When it comes to sport in both the US and the UK, “football” is the biggest sport. However, this is where there is a significant divergence, as Americans and English people refer to very different sports when they say “football”.
Football in the US
In the United States, football is the colloquial name given to gridiron or American football. Each year, the grand final of the National Football League, the Superbowl, is watched by around 100 million people. That’s one-third of the country’s entire population all tuned in at once.
Football in the UK
In the UK, soccer (or as they call it, “football”) is the national sport. It is by far the most popular, despite competition from other quintessentially English sports like cricket and rugby. The English Premier League, the country’s top-flight domestic soccer competition, is the most valuable in the world and contains several global brands, including Manchester United, which is valued at around $3.81 billion. English clubs are also dominant at European level soccer, with the two biggest tournaments (the UEFA Champions League and Europa League) seeing all-English finals in 2019.
Why Are There Two Footballs?
There are actually several versions of football. In addition to soccer and American football, you can also find Gaelic football (mostly played in Ireland), rugby football (usually just called rugby), and Australian rules football. All of these sports share a common ancestry but had their rules diverge at different stages. Although there are big differences between the games, there are also a number of similarities.
Soccer – The Original Football
Soccer is a sport that has a long history in England, with its roots going back as far as the 8th century AD. The modern “association football” that we know today began life in the 19th century when it and rugby football split off from each other. Rugby football would become a sport that players could pick up the ball and run with it, while association football would retain the rule that players can only control the ball with their feet, chest and head.
Divergence of American Football
American football remains strong in US colleges, with NCAA games getting similar levels of coverage to the NFL. It is in these American colleges that the sport began, with many crediting Walter Camp as its inventor. Camp graduated from Yale University and began working there as a football coach. It was here that he created the line of scrimmage and the downs system, both key elements of the sport today.
All in all, the two games of football are loved by their respective populations, so when you’re traveling, remember which football you’re referring to.
