There's no such thing as "real football". There are multiple regional variations of a game that was played in the mid-19th century, that looked a lot like rugby and was called "football". All of them have equal claim to being "real football"

I'm from Donegal, and grew up calling it "football", and calling gaelic football "gaelic". But I would have used soccer a lot when talking about both sports at the same time, e.g. "Do you prefer soccer or gaelic?", as to avoid confusion.
I went to university in Limerick, and found that "football" almost always referred…

Most of the comments on Reddit are dedicated to arguing about this. The general consensus seems to be that Northern Ireland and everyone in-and-around Dublin calls it "football," and most of the rest of country calls "soccer" (with "football" referring to Gaelic football.) The Irish Times calls it soccer, for example: …