In England we call the game “football”, and someone who plays football is a “footballer”.
In the US, as I understand it, the game is called “soccer”. So what are the players called? Surely not “soccerers”?
Um, as you noted in your title, ‘soccer players’.
I think they are usually called “soccer players.” The same holds true for most other sports: “baseball player,” “football player,” “basketball player,” etc. There are probably some exceptions but I can’t think of any off the top of my head. “<sport> player” is the most common usage.
Gay
Just kidding.
Golfer. 
I am not sure why this would ever come up in the U.S. but the proper terminology would be something like “My 7 year old daughter is on a soccer team” or “My son plays soccer and it helps him get rid of all that extra energy.” If it came down to the wire, I agree that “soccer player” would be the best term.
We don’t even use “footballers” to describe the people who play the game we call football.
Curler
Bowler
Soccer Player = Grass Fairy (I kid, I kid!)
We do use “cagers” to refer to basketball players, although it’s not too common.
Not to Hijack (but maybe a little), how many countries consider soccer to be one of the top sports? I have gotten the hint that Europeans look down on the U.S. for not liking soccer in general but Canada doesn’t either. I don’t know much about Mexican soccer but I don’t think it is big there either.
Can someone give just an opinion about which non-European countries love soccer?
People always say that soccer will be the next big thing in the U.S. but that has been since the 1970’s and will never happen for a variety of reasons.
Soccer is the most popular sport in South America, with the exception of Venezuela, and most of Africa. It’s also popular throughout Asia. And it’s probably the most popular sport in Mexico, too.
You’d have an easier time defining the countries where soccer ISN’T the most popular team sport. In Japan, Cuba, and various other Caribbean countries, and Venezuela, it’s baseball. (Soccer is close behind.) In Canada, it’s hockey. In the USA, it varies from region to region, with football and baseball being the big two and basketball very big in some places. In India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, as well as some Caribbean islands, it’s cricket; Australia is also cricket-happy, though Australian football is also a big deal. New Zealand is rugby.
China’s most popular sport is ping pong, but that’s not usually a “Team” sport, so it’s probably… soccer.
That’s about it.
Yeah it’s a big thing in Mexico. In fact I would say it is a big thing throughout Latin America. Big in a way that I don’t think anything is in the US. Think superbowl big just for the regular league games. Literally some towns shutdown every Sunday for the games. Think high school football in the rural south. Towns of 20,000 residents post attendance numbers in the 15-25,000 range. And I just looked it up; Mexico has 192 professional soccer teams in four levels (divisions) of play. And this is in a country with a population a third the size of the US. Can you think of a sport where we have nearly 600 paid (ok maybe some not so well paid, but still paid) professional teams?
We here in the US have many sports and the coverage tends to reflect that. Everywhere that I have been in Latin America the coverage is 60-70% Soccer. Maybe one other thing (Formula 1 in Brazil, Baseball in the Dominican Republic, etc) but even that is generally overshadowed. And eveything after those is an also ran. So yeah I would say it is at least as popular in Latin America as in Europe. And I understand that it is highly popular in Asia and Africa… at least in those countries stable enough to have teams.
Quoth RickJay:
I get the impression that Gaelic football is bigger in Ireland than soccer, too, though soccer is probably second place.
How about eastern Europe? Is soccer the big sport there? I understand both basketball and water polo are big in those countries, although their relative popularity no doubt varies from country to country. How does soccer stack up against those two sports?
Cagers is used by motorcyclists to specify those who are driving cars, FWIW.
Although we do use ruggers to refer to those who play rugby. My user name is my cite.
I always wanted to say that!
It’s funny how, judging by the posts here, Americans seem to think soccer is a ridiculously effete sport, presumably because the players don’t need to wear lots of protective gear like they do in American football. Whereas over here, we think American football is extremely poofy, for exactly the same reason 
American football is a girls games ain’t it. And baseball too, wearing mittens, not allowing the batsman to be HIT.
Steve. At least one of them is.
Soccer’s a big thing in eastern Europe and the balkans. Ukraine has a decent national side, as does Russia, Croatia, the Czechs etc. Also, domestic team support is sometimes linked to some sort of regional pride stemming from communist rule, e.g. see Hajduk Split for an example, where the whole of Dalmatia is mad about them.
For the Europeans. This is why the GQ area shouldn’t be joked in, even if badly. Soccer is not thought an effeminate sport here. If anything it’s thought to be to pugilistic and out of control in your countries. Both are accepted as a good sport here, so too bad you can’t see that from the postings. Maybe the sportsmen’s deriding attitudes can be controlled to actually answer questions truthfully on this subject for a change instead of inflaming people. I see more kids playing soccer than football.
It’s football players and soccer players.