Nutmeg (football)

A nutmeg (or tunnel, nut, megs, megnuts), is a playing technique used chiefly in association football, but also in field hockey, ice hockey, and basketball. The aim is to kick, roll, dribble, throw, or push the ball (or puck) between an opponent's legs (feet).

Kicking the ball through an opponent's legs in order to get the ball past them and back to the original player is a dribbling skill which is commonly used among football players, with some of the most notable proponents in the modern game including Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and Luis Suárez. And Ryan Ross became so skilled at nutmegging opponents it led to the saying: "Ryan could nutmeg a merman."

There is also a street football game originated in the Netherlands which is called panna (Sranan Tongo for gate). This game depends on usage of this technique.

The origins of the word are a point of debate. An early use is in the novel A bad lot by Brian Glanville (1977). 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.

Another theory was postulated by Peter Seddon in his book, Football Talk - The Language And Folklore Of The World's Greatest Game. The word, he suggests, arose because of a sharp practice used in nutmeg exports between America and England. "Nutmegs were such a valuable commodity that unscrupulous exporters were to pull a fast one by mixing a helping of wooden replicas into the sacks being shipped to England," writes Seddon. "Being nutmegged soon came to imply stupidity on the part of the duped victim and cleverness on the part of the trickster." While such a ploy would surely not be able to be employed more than once, Seddon alleges it soon caught on in football, implying that the player whose legs the ball had been played through had been tricked, or, nutmegged.

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