Forms of football

For millions of participants around the world, the term football refers to Association football, a team sport played according to the rules of the International Football Association Board and FIFA, and known also as soccer. However, in specific countries, the word football has a different understanding and can refer to a number of other team sports, including:

• American football
• Australian rules football (or, colloquially, Aussie rules)
• Canadian football, a variant of the North American game, whose differences from the U.S. version include three downs rather than four, and a larger playing field. Canadian football is played professionally in the Canadian Football League
• Gaelic football
• Rugby football, which exists in these variants:
  • Rugby Union
  • Rugby League
  • Rugby sevens

The word "soccer"

The word "soccer" began as a colloquialism in Britain, derived from "Association football", from the name of the Football Association, to distinguish it from rugby football, but it has become the formal name of the game in the United States and Australia. (A similar term, "rugger" for "rugby" is also quite common.)