I am not arguing that. I am just saying that this is a very lame reason to avoid using it.
If I had found any "football" or "footy" domain that costs less than an used car, I would have used it. But soccer was cheaper, and football@soccer is redundant and kind of senseless.
Nonsense. There is also /r/football, which is quite large and to me has more interesting discussion than /r/soccer and less obnoxious mods, but /r/soccer still maintains its dominance.
It's not the name that matters. It's the content and the match threads.