What is real football? I've heard of association football (shortened to soccer by the British), rugby football, Australian rules football, American football and Canadian football but I've never heard of real football.
It's like saying "the real Albert Einstein", as opposed to good Albert Einstein the baker, who is a local celebrity because of his amazing Apfelstrudel.
I guess it is confusing for Americans to find themselves as the cultural minority in some environment.
Confusing, no. Amusing that this is the hill you’re dying on, fucking hilarious. You go on ahead and own that.
You no doubt believe that Newton, Henry VIII, Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror, Canute, Arthur and Launcelot, and Boadicia 1) all played association football, 2) called it the one and only "football", and 3) all other "football" sports around the world are bastard versions of it.
The word "Football" dates from the 13th century. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_%28word%29> The sport of association football, no. While people have no doubt been kicking round things for entertainment for thousands of years, association football as a sport is no older than other football codes like American, rugby, Gaelic, and AFL; all date from the mid to late 19th century. That's why English-speaking countries have differing meanings for "football", because it refers to the most local popular football code *no matter what that is*. Let me repeat: Association football has no primacy, seniority, or priority here. It is not the "first sport" or "the elder sport" or the "original sport" among football codes.
>I guess it is confusing for Americans to find themselves as the cultural minority in some environment.
"Cultural minority", eh? Among the major English-speaking peoples <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_(word)#National_usage>, *Brits are outnumbered—whether by population or number of countries—in terms of how they use "football".*
"Soccer" is a British English word c. 1889. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22633980> According to Stephen Szymanski of the University of Michigan, until 1980 "soccer" and "football" were interchangeably used in Britain <https://web.archive.org/web/20140627210952/ns.umich.edu/Rele...>, when "soccer" became less popular because of a mistaken belief that it is an Americanism. The word still is in use in Britain; see TV shows like Soccer Saturday.
Let me repeat: The association and American varieties of football are merely two of several codes that all emerged in the mid-19th century from people in various countries attempting to formalize in some way the informal sport of "running with/kicking the leather-covered thing" that has existed for thousands of years. Not, as the average Briton who thinks the word "soccer" is a product of 1970s American culture vaguely believes, Americans seeing British association football in action and rudely deciding to change the "mother sport" by changing the shape of the ball and letting players carry it.