Rugby used to be called "rugby football" and Soccer was short for "association football". By the time it was called football here, American football was already more popular in the US, so they stuck with "soccer".
Soccer is the original word used to distinguish the sport from rugby when it was invented. It's not an americanism, just a word that was replaced in Europe over the centuries but stayed around in the US.
Because if that is the case I think it should be other way around, our European football should be called football and American football should be called soccer
In North America when one says football everyone thinks that weird game with funny shaped ball being thrown all over the place and feet are used mostly for running and very seldom for kicking the ball?
