>Soccer is English, it's called "football" in English, so what's this urge to drop into Spanish dialect all of a sudden?
It's probably just to verbally differentiate it from American football without saying 'soccer'.
Should British people feel offended if Americans call British football 'football' and not 'soccer'? IME they'd more likely be happy an American didn't call it by the Americanized name
Edit: I'd guess that the location of the last World Cup, and the fact that the US team didn't do too badly may also factor into things
It's probably just to verbally differentiate it from American football without saying 'soccer'.
Should British people feel offended if Americans call British football 'football' and not 'soccer'? IME they'd more likely be happy an American didn't call it by the Americanized name
Edit: I'd guess that the location of the last World Cup, and the fact that the US team didn't do too badly may also factor into things