Recently I have heard the phrase "world soccer" being used on CNN when talking about soccer news. Is this something that is happening across the board?

Personally, I think it is a great idea. As we get more and more globally focused, it would seem to make sense that the sport the world calls football should be called that here. In the rest of the world, what we call football is called American Football and the term soccer, is used rather archaically in England. The history of the term "soccer" is from the time when a Football Association was formed in England to differentiate the sport from the Rugby Football Union which was also being established. To differentiate between the two, rubgy became the name for that sport and football assoc.,then asoc, or soccer, was derived. Outside Britain, the rest of the world does not seem familiar with the term soccer.

So, I think it is a great idea to rename soccer World Football and then we might actually feel like we are playing an international sport when we start kicking a ball about.