football or soccer

is the sport called football or soccer in Japan?

When Japanese say "sakkaa," it refers to the sport "football" as in FIFA, International Federation of Football Association.

When Japanese say "futtobooru," that is likely to be referring to American football or rugby football, or other types of football.

So... if you are talking about the sports under FIFA, then when talking in Japanese with Japanese, the word to use is "sakkaa," of course taken from the English word soccer.

I will climb on a thin branch but I believe that outside North America, that is in the rest of our big wide world world, soccer is always called football. It is played with a minimum of equipment: shorts and shirts, socks and shoes. no protective equipment. Football American style should be properly called USA rugby, as they handle the ball as much with their hands as with their feet and use lots of protective equipment, unlike rugby players in the rest of the world who don't. The French rugby players do wear some unusual uniforms if one go by their calendar "les dieux du stade 2008"

I'm going to disagree, Auntie Bert, as it's called soccer in New Zealand too, and also in Australia I believe. In New Zealand football refers to rugby, and in Australia often to Aussie rules football. Soccer is always called soccer. I'm not sure about South Africa, but since rugby is popular there you might find soccer is soccer there too. And then in Ireland they have Gaelic football, so they may also differentiate, but I'm not sure on that one.

We can probably say that in any English-speaking country football is whichever is the most popular sport involving kicking a ball.

As an average stupid Japanese I usually call it sakkaa (soccer).
Most TV programs or any newspapers call it sakkaa, though a few TV programs that are a bit pretentious call it "football".
When I use the word "futtobooru (football)" it doesn�ft mean soccer or rugby, but means American football. And we call rugby ragubii.

soccer in Japan then?

soccer in Japan.

dan