The terms "Gridiron Football" or "North American Football" might be more appropriate to use than American Football.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridiron_football
Gridiron football, also known as North American football or, in North America, simply football, is a family of football team sports primarily played in the United States and Canada. American football, which uses 11-player teams, is the form played in the United States and the best known form of gridiron football worldwide, while Canadian football, featuring 12-player teams, predominates in Canada. Other derivative varieties include indoor football and Arena football, football for smaller teams (most commonly eight players), and informal games such as touch and flag football. Football is played at professional, collegiate, high school, semi-professional, and amateur levels.
These sports originated in the 19th century out of older games related to modern rugby football, more specifically rugby union football. American and Canadian football developed alongside (but independently from) each other and were originally more distinct before Canadian teams adopted features of the American game. Both varieties are distinguished from other football sports by their use of hard plastic helmets and shoulder pads, the forward pass, the system of downs, a number of unique rules and positions, measurement in customary units of yards (even in Canada, which mostly metricated in the 1970s, yards are still used), and a distinctive brown leather ball in the shape of a prolate spheroid with pointed ends.
