And I’m literally saying to you that you couldn’t be more wrong, your anecdotal experience doesn’t change history or facts.
The word “soccer” was used in English newspapers 123,165 times in the 1950s. In Ireland 22,229 times. In Scotland 7,639 times. In Wales 9,032 times. And that’s excluding any variants for newspaper words that may have split across 2 lines and appeared as something like “soc- cer”.
So let’s focus on that World Cup win. 1966. 16,492 uses of the word “soccer” in the newspapers. World Cup Final on the 30th of July.
Oh what’s this? The Daily Mirror. Page 11. An article on Bobby Charlton and I quote “The two dimensions combine to produce the most alert, adroit and ferocious guided missile machine English Soccer has produced in years.”
Want I find more? Microfilm is fun. It’s almost like I did a history paper on this a few decades ago…
You are just being deliberately obnoxious now.
I’m a massive football fan. I come from a footballing hotbed in England. My stepdad has been a football his whole life, his dad before him etc.
None of them ever called it Soccer, and they hate the term, and it is nothing to do with some big name players joining the NASL in the 70’s and 80’s, because actually that was kind of a flop.
Next to my teams stadium there is the largest independent football memorabilia store which sells everything from match programmes, shirts etc from years ago, I mean decades, stuff that predates your claims. There is never a mention of the word Soccer unless the product is from North America.
There is a football museum in Manchester, you can go to it, the word Soccer isn’t used.
Most teams here have stadium tours, museums, and a tour guide. Go to them, the word soccer in these clubs’ history is never used.
When my club was formed, it merged 2 local teams in the late 1900’s, there is a well known story about the different names they were proposing to use, none of them had the word Soccer in them.
When the football league was formed in the 1800’s it was named the Football League, amongst the different proposed names the word Soccer is never used. Same for pretty much every club.
You can see programming from decades ago, even radio broadcasts that predate television, again the word Football is the term that they use. Not even football specific programmes, but show that just make reference to the sport.
The U.K. spread football around the world, not just to Europe, but to South America etc. The stories are well documented. The translation these countries have to call football are translations from the football, not soccer.
You have another forum member on here who grew up in Scotland and now lives on a Portuguese Island which is popular with tourists from around Europe, and he is saying the word has always been football, and people of different nationalities have and always have used the literal translation from the word football.
You can watch documentaries or read about how in the 2nd World War the Nazi’s liked the team Schalke, and the Italian dash it’s liked Lazio, they make 1st hand account from their perspective and the perspective from the allies. Again the word football is used, not soccer.
In the 1st world war there was a well documented Christmas Day truce between the opposing forces. Here they both played football on no man’s land, as well as soldiers cutting the hair of their opposing soldiers and sharing chocolate etc. Diaries and 1st hand records from both sides use the word football.
In the U.K. we have a large group of boomers who desire to have things back to like they were in decades gone by, even stuff that predates their adult lives, like the pre decimalisation of money, and the biggest example of this would be BREXIT. Believe me if Soccer was the preferred term of football in the U.K., then these boomers would be all over returning it to that name. They don’t, in fact they hate it, because it’s more a name that has came up more recently with the popularity of the sport in the North America and how it relates in broadcasts etc from North America.
I’m sorry but you live in the USA, yes you read a book that’s told you one thing, but that book is wrong, listen to the people telling you it is by 1st hand accounts and 2nd hand accounts.
I don’t say and insist on something on something happening or happens in the USA because I read it in a book and dismiss your account.
The term may have originated in the U.K., but as has already been east a listed, this would have been slang, and not a more widely used terminology, and certainly not largely popular or the main terminology.