One of the leading soccer teams in Italy and Europe, in terms of both championships and fan following, is AC Milan, founded in 1899. Dozens of other teams, including leading ones in Spain and Argentina, also have "AC" as part of their club name. The meaning of "AC" varies depending on whether a soccer club is Italian.
Italian Meaning
AC Milan stands for Associazione Calcio Milan, with "associazione" meaning "association" and "calcio" meaning soccer, derived from the Italian verb "calciare," to kick. Additional soccer clubs in Italy that use this construction as part of their full title include AC Chievo Verona and AC Cesena. As of the 2010-11 season, AC Milan, Chievo Verona and Cesena play in Serie A, the top league. FC stands for football club, as in Arsenal FC and Barcelona FC. Serie A team Parma FC was once known as AC Parma.
Milan Significance
In practice, only AC Milan retains the "AC" as part of its name in everyday discussion of soccer teams. This is to distinguish AC Milan, which wears red-and-black vertically striped jerseys, from Inter Milan, which broke away from AC Milan in 1908. Also known as Inter and in full as FC Internazionale de Milano, Inter players wear jerseys with blue-and-black vertical stripes. Both teams play at famed San Siro stadium in Milan.
Non-Italian Meaning
Elsewhere, AC stands for athletic club. Spain has Athletic Club Bilbao, commonly known as Athletic Bilbao. Atletico Madrid was Athletic Club Madrid until 1941 when General Franco ruled out non-Hispanicized soccer club names. Argentina has Club Atlético Boca Juniors and Quilmes Atlético Club, and Uruguay has Club Atlético River Plate. In France, the port town of Le Havre, one of the earliest sites to import the English invention of soccer, hosts Le Havre AC, and you can find Athletic Club Ajaccio on Corsica. The Athletic Club of St. Louis, a Division 2 team, plays in the Professional League of the U.S. Soccer Federation.
Naming Conventions
Very often, a soccer team's name contains AC or FC along with a town name. This practice started with the world's oldest soccer club, Sheffield FC, founded in 1857 as an amateur team. As soccer expanded, the first paid professionals began to appear, and football and athletic clubs became a mix of amateur and professional soccer teams. Club soccer, the foundation of the modern game, distinguished itself right from the beginning from school teams, also present at soccer's first rules meeting at a London tavern in 1863, and national teams representing a country in international competition, which began in 1872 when England played Scotland.
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