What is football jargon and where does it come from?

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What's it all about?

Have you ever wondered why scoring three goals in one game is called a hat-trick, or if players get an actual cap when they play internationally?

These are both examples of jargon - the specialised vocabulary, technical terms or slang used by a profession, trade or group. You might have heard this term in relation to law or medicine, but football has its own jargon.

Well, wonder no more. BBC Bitesize is here to help you learn the origins of some of the best-known and most widely used football terminology - just in time for the 2026 FIFA Men's World Cup!

A still taken from a cricket match between the Hurricanes and the Sixers, two Australian women's teams. Two players in red face each other, one in mid bat-swing.
Did you know cricket teams score hat-tricks as well?
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Hat-trick

A player gets a hat-trick when they score three goals in one game, but the use of the term actually didn’t start on the football pitch.

The phrase came from cricket, and was used when a bowler took three wickets from three consecutive balls. The club would give the bowler a hat to celebrate this achievement.

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Nutmeg

A close-up of two male football players on a pitch. The player on the left has nutmegged the one on the right - he has kicked the ball between his legs. The ball now sits just behind the player on the grass.
It happens to the best of us. Isn't that right, Serge Aurier?

If you’ve been nutmegged, you might feel a bit foolish. Some argue this was part of the reason behind using it to describe the ball being threaded between a player’s legs.

In the 1870s, nutmeg - a spice native to Indonesia - was very valuable. Sneaky traders would mix wooden replicas in with the real nutmegs to trick the people who bought them.

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Clean sheet

An image of an open spiral-bound notebook, showing two blank white unlined pages.
Clean bed sheets are lovely, but for footballers, a blank piece of paper at the end of the game is lovelier.

If your team wins without letting the other team score, you’ve kept a clean sheet.

This is because sports reporters used to record scores on white sheets of paper - so if yours was clean at the end of the match, that would mean no goals had been scored against you.

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Cap

An image of David Beckham wearing his England shirt. He's receiving his 100th international cap, which he's holding. It's resting on a grey plinth. David is looking directly at the cap, away from the camera.
Gold is definitely David Beckham's colour.

When a player plays for their country’s team, they’re said to receive a cap.

As it turns out, players literally do get a cap! Years ago, these were used to distinguish teams from one another, before distinctly coloured football shirts became the norm.

The record-holder for England is goalkeeper Peter Shilton, with 125 appearances between 1970 and 1990. Wayne Rooney has 120, while David Beckham is in third place with 115.

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Volley

A close-up image of about a dozen arrows flying through the sky, as if they've just been fired by archers. They are set against a bright, clear blue sky.
Oui, c'est un 'volley'.

The word 'volley' as a sporting term is thought to have first been used in tennis around 1851, and comes from the French 'volée', which means ‘flight’. It was originally used to describe lots of arrows being fired by archers at the same time.

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Derby

Derbies have certainly changed since the Earl's day.

A derby is when two teams from a local area play against one another.

There are a couple of different theories about the origins of this word. One is that it comes from a horse race called the Epsom Derby, which was started by the 12th Earl of Derby in 1780. Because of its fierce head-to-head combat, the word came to mean any highly competitive sporting event.

Others claim it stems from the town of Ashbourne in Derbyshire, which has hosted a no-rules Shrovetide street football match since at least 1687, with the two halves of the town playing against each other. It's still played annually today - though it's a little less dangerous than it used to be!

This article was published in September 2018 and updated in June 2026.

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