eVeRyWhErE eLse CaLLs iT fOotbAll!

Text labels showing the term each depicted country uses for association football

This 3-panel comic meme jokes about global differences in naming association football. The first panel shows stick figures representing the UK (calls the sport Football), Spain/Mexico (calls it Fútbol), and Portugal/Brazil (calls it Futebol) looking annoyed at the US-representing figure, which refers to the sport as Soccer, playing on the common internet complaint that the US is unusual for using the term Soccer. The second panel shows a Japan-representing stick figure approaching the US figure, who has defensively stylized the word as $øcc€r while other countries look irritated. The third panel subverts expectations, as the Japanese figure embraces the US figure: Japan refers to the sport as Sakkā, a loanword very close to Soccer, making them allies against the majority of countries that use variants of the word Football.

This meme was sourced from an RSS feed of the Reddit Meme community. It puts a novel twist on the long-running popular internet debate about the 'correct' name for association football by highlighting that Japan's terminology for the sport aligns closer to the US term Soccer rather than the Football variant used in most other countries.