American football has been referred to as just football (in America) longer than football (soccer) was called just football in Britain. It was called association football as a distinct game separate from rugby football and other football games. Football distinguishing it from games played on horseback. Soccer was British slang from association (similarly at the time rugby football has slang term rugger.) Eventually the association part fell out of use but other countries that had developed their own football games tended to still call it soccer. I don’t really care either way, I’ll call it football when talking to people who call it football and soccer with people who call out soccer, I just think the origin of the terms is pretty interesting.

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