Soccer is a British word though, but predominantly southerner / Oxfordian.

Association Football used to get contracted to Assoc or Soc to differentiate it from Rugby Football.

And in Oxford, they historically liked to add -er to the end of things; still in parlance today is calling Rugby “rugger”, £5 note “fiver”, the Bodleian Library “Bodder”.

Assoc became “soccer”.

It’s not an American thing. It’s a posh southern England thing that got exported to the states by American students at Oxford returning stateside and bringing the game back with them.