Perhaps this is the very first mention of a sport called “American football” in Russian literature.

This is in regards to a chapter from the book by G. A. Duperron:
“Athletics and games. 2. Football and other games of the same type.”
1909 (with 1912 and 1915 in reprints).

Georgy Alexandrovich Duperron (1877-1934) was the founder of Russian football (soccer) and the Olympic Movement in Russia. He was the first Russian football referee and sports journalist, historian, theorist and bibliographer of Russian sports. The images below show the pages of the book describing the sport. It is interesting to note that the text was written before the formation of the USSR and thus uses the “old letters” that are no longer present in the language. Furthermore, we should note that a lot has changed in the world of American Football since the dawn of the 20th century.

Mr. Duperron was a multifaceted sports enthusiast, journalist, and historian, his most enduring legacy was his role in founding the All-Russian Football Union in 1912 and, crucially, organizing the Russian Empire’s first official national soccer team for that year’s Stockholm Olympics. Beyond football, he was a passionate advocate for the Olympic movement, co-founding the Russian Olympic Committee and introducing the modern concept of organized, competitive sports to a nation previously focused on gymnastics. Through his prolific writing, administrative genius, and boundless enthusiasm, Duperron laid the entire organizational and philosophical groundwork for the modern sporting culture that would flourish in Russia and the Soviet Union, cementing his status as the nation’s first true sports visionary.

Interestingly, in the list of references in the book, in one of the first lines, the author cited a book by Walter Camp, the “father of American football,” all under the same name – American Football.