It’s because soccer is more of a southern English slang for football so it was never in parlance across the country (the UK never “switched” from soccer to football).
There are many games of football: rugby league, rugby union, association football etc.
There’s no denying the UK has a bias in the media and literature, especially in the past, to southerners. Thus soccer became quite common in writing and thus exported widely across the world.
But when many of the best football teams in the UK are northern, it’s understandable that the posh southern slang for the game was never widely regarded and remains ridiculed to this day.
It’s because soccer is more of a southern English slang for football so it was never in parlance across the country (the UK never “switched” from soccer to football).
There are many games of football: rugby league, rugby union, association football etc.
Association, contracted to assoc / soc.
And around Oxford, people like to add ‘-er’ to things. Rugby = rugger. Association football = soccer. Freshman = fresher.
There’s no denying the UK has a bias in the media and literature, especially in the past, to southerners. Thus soccer became quite common in writing and thus exported widely across the world.
But when many of the best football teams in the UK are northern, it’s understandable that the posh southern slang for the game was never widely regarded and remains ridiculed to this day.
Worth putting the posh part in the first line too, definitely a very public school thing to call it soccer.
And for any confused non-brits reading, “public” schools are private schools. We named them wrong for a joke.