Football or Soccer

Acouple of days ago I went to the park to kick a ball around to deal with the stresses of the day. When I arrived at the park I noticed some guys having a scrimmage game going on. I walked over and asked an individual..."May I join your 'Soccer' game". He gave me a funny look like he had eaten some bitter candy and said to me with a thick british accent, "there ain't no soccer here, this here is football". As North Americans we often forget that we aren't the only ones who play this beautiful sport we call "Soccer" but we are the only ones that call it by that name. This made me think...where did the name come from. During the 1970s when America was starting to build the grassroots to a english style of professional football league, they were thinking of ways to properly market the sport and the league to the masses. The North American Football Association was the first name decided for the new league, but since American-Football had already been adopted in the nation prior to English-Football a conflict would be caused between the two names.  Therefore the directors were looking to change the name to take away the familiarity with Americas primary sport. Since they had already decided to call the collection of teams an association the directors decided to replace the word "Football" with a shorten version of "AsSOCiation"; "SOCcer". I bet no one ever really thought when they were saying they wanted to play soccer they were actually saying Association. In the end the man with the thick british accent let me play but he made sure to remind me, "Mate this is the original Football you here me, because you use your foot and a ball not that rubbish across the border where they are running with balls in HANDS calling it FOOTball"