Nutmeg (football)

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A nutmeg (or tunnel or panna) is a technique used in football (soccer), in which a player plays the ball through an opponent's legs and retrieves it himself.

The origins of the word are a point of debate. According to Alex Leith's book Over the Moon, Brian - The Language of Football, "nuts refers to the testicles of the player through whose legs the ball has been passed and nutmeg is just a development from this". The use of the word nutmeg to mean leg in Cockney rhyming slang has also been put forward as an explanation. The most likely source, however, was postulated by Peter Seddon in his book "Football Talk - The Language And Folklore Of The World's Greatest Game". He states that 'to nutmeg' was a Victorian verb meaning 'to trick' or 'to fool' and arose after the nutmeg trade gained a reputation for duplicitous goings-on, with vendors selling fake nutmeg. It soon caught on in football, implying that the player whose legs the ball had been played through had been tricked, or, nutmegged.

In northern England the term nutmeg is often shortened to "Nuts" in informal use.

To be nutmegged is commonly seen as showing the opponent is lacking in footballing skill, and therefore amongst amateur players (particularly children) nutmegs are frequently tried so as to embarass the opposition player and prove your own skill. The player that performs the nutmeg would usually say "Olé!"

1 Trivia
2 Further reading
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Trivia

In Southeast Asia, where Malay is one of the influential languages, to nutmeg someone in football is to 'lobang', which means 'hole' in the Malay language.

[edit] Further reading

The Nutmeg dribbling trick. Expert Football. Retrieved on 2005-12-20. — stills of a player executing a nutmeg, demonstrating the trick of pulling the ball back in order to force the defender to open his legs
"Nutmeg earns O'Shea praise", Manchester United, 2003-04-26. — John O'Shea's nutmeg on Luís Figo
Finishing and Scoring. Expert Football. Retrieved on 2005-12-20. — A well-positioned goalkeeper may be vulnerable to a nutmeg.