Trump suggests NFL should change its name as he calls soccer 'real football'

Donald Trump has weighed in on an age-old debate between fans of football, and fans of American football - which one should be called 'football'.

For most of the rest of the world where it is a popular sport, the game where players manipulate a ball mostly using their feet is referred to as 'football'.

But this is different in the US, where the game in which players mostly carry and throw the ball with their hands, with some occasional kicking, is called 'football', while the former is 'soccer'.

It's become a point of contention among fans of both sports, including US football fans, that's soccer, not American football, who have been shown chanting 'it's called soccer'.

With the US now hosting the FIFA World Cup, Trump has weighed in on the debate, but not in the way that you might expect.

In fact, Trump appeared to suggest that the NFL change its name in order to avoid further confusion about the sports as football, that's soccer, grows in popularity in the US.

Is it football or soccer? (Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)

"When you look what has happened to football in the United States, again soccer in the United States, we seem to never call it that, because we have a little bit of a conflict with another thing that's called football," the president said, according to vt.

He added: "But when you think about it, shouldn't it really called, this is football, there's no question, we have to come up with another name for the NFL. It really doesn't make sense when you think about it, it is really football."

Football, or soccer, isn't actually the sport's full name though, with this actually being 'Association Football'.

It is the most popular sport in the world by a long shot, being played all around the globe, while cricket, which is hugely popular in India, Pakistan, Bangaldesh, and Sri Lanka, comes in second.

American Football involves using the hands a lot more (Brent Just/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, American Football claims the top spot in the US as the most popular sport.

Given it's popularity around the world, what about the way the sports are referred to in other languages?

In Portuguese, the main language in Brazil where the sport is practically a national religion, it's 'futebol', pronounced 'foo-chi-bol', and in Spanish 'soccer' is 'fútbol', while US football is 'fútbol americano'.

Interestingly while the name 'soccer' has now become synonymous with the US, the term doesn't actually originate there.

According to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, the name 'soccer' actually comes from the game's full name, Association Football.

In the 1880s, students at the University of Oxford would shorten 'rugby' to 'rugger', while Association Football was shortened to 'assoccer', and then 'soccer'.