Football, Soccer, Whatever

Rune insists the only sport played with an actual round ball that you actually kick with your foot consistently should be called football. Stefan, who grew up calling it soccer and once won most improved, is not so sure. Joining them in this episode is Dr. Hunter Fujak, senior lecturer in Sport Management and author of Code Wars, to explain why Australia is unlike anywhere else on earth, a country of 26 million people somehow sustaining seven commercial sports at once, four of them called football. Along the way, Rune uncovers an inconvenient truth: the word "soccer" wasn't invented by Americans. It was invented by the British, who today pretends it never happened. And Stefan proposes a new title for a landmark book in Australian football history. This episode is about what it means to be a global game in a country that already has too many games, and why that might actually make the FIFA World Cup really special.Watch every minute of the FIFA World Cup 2026™ via SBS On Demand