In Ireland, football means this:
If we mean soccer, we say soccer.It’s curious that, while the terms “bonnet” and “hood” are obviously similar in meaning, “boot” and “trunk” are not, at least not in any manner that I can see. Way back when, the trunk on a car might be an actual trunk.
And before that when the compartment at the back of a coach was there for literal boots (originally under the driver’s seat). The glove compartment was really somewhere for the driver to keep his gloves and the dashboard was a screen to catch the mud ‘dashed’ up by the horses’ hooves.
Back then there was little communication across the Atlantic, so the two countries developed different names for the same things - sometimes promoted by ad campaigns.
I was watching a British film from the 1940’s recently set in London and there was an American football on a wall (British pub that was given the football as a gift from an American pilot who was passing through) and the British bar owner called it just “a football” to some non-Anglo fellow who asked what it was. I thought there would be a more specific word for it there.
ETA: I still agree with myself. Which I guess is good if you’re my shrink.
Football means soccer in almost every other country in the world.