'footballer' originates from English, specifically the compound 'football' plus the agent-forming suffix '-er', where 'football' originally meant 'a ball game played with the foot' and '-er' meant 'one who performs an action'.

'football' is attested in Middle English (e.g. 'foteballe') combining 'fot' (foot) and 'balle' (ball). The agent noun 'footballer' was formed later in Modern English by adding the suffix '-er' to 'football'.

Initially it referred simply to someone who played a ball game with the feet; over time it came to mean specifically a player of the organized sport called football (soccer) or, in some regions, the dominant local code of football.