What is the difference between football and soccer? The continent you live on apparently.

I live in Australasia where Australian Rules Football (AFL) dominates. Eighteen players in tight shorts and sleeveless jerseys (or guernseys as they call them) run around a cricket pitch trying to kick an oval ball through a series of four goalposts. I’ve lived here almost forty years and I still can’t get into this game. It’s like aerial ping pong with it’s marks, kicks and tackles. It dominates the sport headlines for about nine months of the year.

They do play soccer here but that’s traditionally for Sheilas,Wogs and Poofters, as former Australian captain and sports commentator Johnny Warren called his book.

The national side is nicknamed The Socceroos as opposed to The Footballeroos. The more successful woman’s team are The Matildas after Waltzing. It’s mandatory for all things in Australia to have a nickname usually ending in a vowel. Gazza, Bazza, Macca, Jono etc.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup will be held in the US, Canada and Mexico starting in a few days.

Back in the seventies I don’t ever remember hearing America and football or soccer in the same sentence. That was until a certain Brazilian football god signed for a US outfit.

Backing up a bit. I thought the word soccer was an American invention but it turns out it was first used in Britain in the 1800s. It is derived from Association Football. AsSOCiation with an er on the end.

Americans first became aware of football/soccer when the 1966 World Cup was beamed on to their TV sets. I forget who won that ! By 1968 the National American Soccer League (NASL) was born.

The New York Cosmos was founded by two Turkish American brothers. Atlantic Record producers Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertagun plus eight executives from their parent company Warner Communications who all chipped in US$350,000 each in 1970, some of them never having ever watched a game before. They joined the league in 1971. It didn’t attract much world wide attention.

Americans like their sport with a certain razzle-dazzle and plenty of breaks. Think baseball, gridiron and basketball. Perfect for advertising on sponsored television. Football/soccer was like a two act play with an interval. A bit much for the typical American attention span perhaps ?

The coup for CEO Steve Ross of Warner Communications, now sole owner in 1975 was the signing of Pele from Santos for 4.7 million US dollars. That’s when America and the rest of the world sat up.

The deal wasn’t easy to land. It took former German youth goalkeeper, soccer groupie and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to convince the Brazilian president that Pele’s defection would benefit Brazil’s standing on the world stage.

Pele’s first game was to be televised by CBS such was the world wide press interest. Randall Island, the clubs ground was pretty barren and devoid of much grass so was spray painted green. Pele thought he had caught some sort of fungal foot infection after playing on it.

With crowds up to 70,000 since moving on to the Giants stadium, Cosmos went on another spending spree with Italian striker Giorgio Chinaglia, German captain Franz Beckenbauer, and Brazilian defender Carlos Alberto.

As I said before, Americans like a spectacle. A soggy pie and a lukewarm cup of Bovril at half time wont cut it in the States. They want largess. Cheer leaders, marching bands and Disney figure mascots. I attended a gridiron game in Calgary, Canada in the late seventies and the three spectators in front of me had matching blue silk bomber jackets with Mom, Dad and Junior embroidered on the back. Cute !

They also can’t abide draws in the USA. Instead of penalty deciders the NASL devised the shoot out. Five seconds and thirty five yards to go one on one with the goalkeeper. Quite entertaining but not adopted by anyone else.

Other teams tried to keep up with this circus frenzy by buying high ranking foreign players but became financially crippled and started to drop out of the NASL.

When Pele retired in 1977 interest in the beautiful game waned.

Lucrative television deals were rescinded, salary caps were introduced causing many overseas players to return back to Europe and South America.

The NASL nose dived and was defunct by 1984. After competing in the disastrous Major Indoor Soccer League for a season, Cosmos folded in 1985.

I’m glad to see that the US has now a fully functioning Major League Soccer (MLS) and hope Saudi Arabia Pro League heed the warning signs of the 70’s NASL.

Go the Socceroos/G’aun yersel Scotland !

(Post by John Allan from Bridgetown, Western Australia – June 2026)