Soccer Words

Here is a bonus blog post for the month of December, in honor of Orlando’s professional soccer teams that were highly successful this year. The men’s team, Orlando City Lions, made it to the semifinals and the women’s team, the Orlando Pride, WON the MLS Championship (in addition to winning the mid-year tournament!). So, I decided to look into some of the ‘weird’ soccer words that are not generally used in other major sports.

For example, most sports are played on a court (tennis, basketball) or a field (football, baseball) or on ice (hockey). Not soccer. Soccer games are played on a “pitch.” What? I thought that the word pitch was used to indicate the throw from a baseball pitcher (hence the name of the position, yes?) towards home plate and a batter (using a bat, yes?). There are some other meanings, too, (pitch black, pitch a tent), but it’s also used to describe the field where a soccer game is played. Why?

• Apparently, some soccer terms come from the sport of cricket. Similar to pitching a tent when you pound the stakes into the ground to keep the floor of the tent in place and the roof of the tent from collapsing, in cricket, there are stakes driven into the ground which become targets for the players. Cricket is older than soccer, so soccer games were often played on a cricket field – a “pitch” – hence the continued use of the term, pitch, in today’s soccer.

Here are some other fun soccer terms.

• “Park the bus” – means that all players on a team that is either ahead by a small margin or tied will play defensively, to protect that lead or tie.
• “Cap” – a cap is a number to indicate how many appearances a player has made for his or her national team.
• “Clean sheet” – to indicate that the goalie did not allow a goal (nothing to do with laundry, everything to do with paper).
• “Dodgy” – a British term (say it with a British accent and you’ll know what it means😉) that indicates someone or something that is not so great. Americans might say that the effort a player used was “weak.” Brits and soccer players and announcers say the effort was dodgy.
• “Gaffer” – a soccer manager; the head coach in the U.S.
• “Gutted” – not just a soccer term, but British for incredibly disappointed. It makes sense, doesn’t it? When a result makes your stomach (your gut) feel very upset, you are gutted.
• “Kit” – known as the uniform in the U.S. Have you heard of the expression, “The whole kit and kaboodle”? That’s what kit means with respect to a soccer player’s uniform – all of the attire worn by a player.

There are other fun soccer terms, but I thought these would be a good start – and a good way to end 2024 ☺️🎆.

Enjoy the holidays!