The Origins Of 5 Soccer Terms You Might Hear on ‘Ted Lasso’

American and British English have a long list of differences, but perhaps nowhere is that more obvious than in the debate over which sport should be known as “football.” 

In the UK, football is association football—better known in the US and elsewhere as soccer. Football to an American, of course, is American football—a very different game, with a very different set of rules, and an entirely different vocabulary.

The popularity of Apple TV’s soccer sitcom Ted Lasso, however, has brought these two worlds together, with the eponymous American college football coach, played by Jason Sudeikis, hired to coach soccer team AFC Richmond over in England. Much of the show’s humor ultimately involves the Ted’s steep learning curve picking up both English slang and English football vernacular—with US fans of the show going along with him for the ride. Get familiar with these five British terms you might hear on the series now that it’s back for another season.

1. TOTAL FOOTBALL 
2. TIKI-TAKA 
3. DERBY
4. NUTMEG
5. WAG

TOTAL FOOTBALL 

There’s an entire storyline in Ted Lasso that revolves around Ted inadvertently coming up with a new playing tactic for AFC Richmond that he’s later told has already been invented.

Although some historians of the game claim the term should be credited to English coach Jimmy Hogan back in the 1930s, total football—a fluid playing system, in which any outfield player can essentially take on the role of another during the game—is particularly associated with the Dutch team Ajax in the 1960s and ‘70s, under the legendary managers Rinus Michels and, later, Johan Cruyff.

As a result, although this tactic might be far older, the name by which it has become known is the English translation of its Dutch equivalent, totaalvoetbal.

TIKI-TAKA 

Tiki-taka is the name of a fast-paced style of play in soccer, in which the players on one team make repeated and finely accurate short passes between one another, with the intention of solidly retaining possession of the ball. It’s a style particularly associated with several Spanish teams, including Spain’s national team (who used a modified version, dubbed “tiki-taka 2.0,” in the 2026 World Cup).

Fittingly, it’s also a Spanish term, popularly said to have been coined in the mid 2000s—apparently in imitation of the back-and-forth nature of tiki-taka play—by the late Spanish sports journalist and commentator Andrés Montes. Other accounts, however, credit the term to other famous names in Spanish football, suggesting that it might have been in informal use in Spanish football somewhat earlier.  

DERBY

In horse racing, a derby is an annual race typically open only to three-year-old horses. In that context—which includes America’s famous Kentucky Derby—the race takes its name from England’s Epson Derby, which is one of English horse racing’s five most important races (known collectively as the Classics), which in turn takes its name from the English Earl of Derby who first organized the race way back in 1780.

Although not the oldest of the English Classics, the Derby is nonetheless considered the most prestigious and most anticipated race in the horse racing calendar, and offers riders and trainers the most lucrative prize fund. As such, its name over time came to be used of any major sporting event—which, in the context of English soccer, meant local grudge matches between local rival teams from the same city (e.g. Manchester United and Manchester City) or region (e.g. Newcastle United and Sunderland). 

NUTMEG

If a soccer player nutmegs his opponent, then he kicks the ball through his opponent’s legs, sidesteps him as he attempts to intercept it, and then retakes possession of the ball behind his opponent’s back. It’s an ingenious play that often has the added benefit of making the opponent look utterly foolish—which is likely the reason why this particular term is often claimed to have emerged sometime in the 1960s as a mocking taunt, with “nutmeg!” called out to the embarrassed player in question.

Precisely why nutmeg should be used this way, and this maneuver come to be known as nutmegging, is a little more mysterious, with various explanations claiming nutmeg is rhyming slang for leg, or else that it harkens back to the days of Victorian slang, when to nutmeg meant to dupe or deceive (because unscrupulous spice traders would so often pad out their supply of the notoriously expensive spice with sawdust and other worthless material).

Alas, perhaps the most likely explanation, however, is that nutmegging instead refers to two nutmeg-shaped organs of the male body, under which the soccer ball is passed when it is kicked between the opponent’s legs. 

WAG

A wag might be a mischievous young boy (and to play the wag means to play truant in British slang), in soccer a wag is something quite different. In fact, in this context, WAG is actually an acronym coined in the tabloid press of the early 2000s to refer to the “wives and girlfriends” of the various English soccer stars who would so frequently find themselves and their love lives splashed across the front pages of newspapers.