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The Football Dictionary
Your comprehensive guide to football and soccer terminology, slang, and phrases used by fans and players worldwide.
A player who's completely focused and performing at their peak. When someone's locked in, they're not making mistakes, they're dominant, and they're unplayable. The opposite of a player who's distracted or going through the motions.
Rodri is not messing about here, he's locked in
An award given each year to the best male and female footballer for the previous year. It is presented by France Football magazine and voted for by one representative journalist from each country inside the FIFA top 100 rankings. The Ballon d’Or is the most prestigious individual award in football. It began in 1955 as an award for the best European player but expanded to include any player based in Europe in 1995 and then to any player in the World in 2007. The Ballon d'Or Féminin was first awarded in 2018 and is now a central part of the big gala awards night each year. To win a Ballon d'Or marks you down as an all-time great.
After years of back and forth between Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi (13 wins between them over 15 years) the men’s award has opened back up in recent years, Harry Kane winning it in 2026. Spanish players have dominated the Ballon d'Or Féminin, winning 6 in a row between 2021 and 2026, Aitana Bonmatí and Alexia Putellas with 3 wins apiece..
The Premier League is the top division of English football. Founded in the 1992/93 season, replacing the old Football League, it consists of 20 teams with 3 teams relegated and replaced with 3 teams promoted from the Championship (the English second division) every season. The Premier League has become the biggest and most popular league in the world in the last twenty years, with a global audience of nearly 5 billion people across 212 territories, and a broadcasting deal worth just over £9 billion. The Premier League is where the best players play, the best managers ply their trade, and the fastest, most exciting football is played.
Manchester United are the most successful team in the Premier League era, winning the title 13 times.
The Community Shield (formerly the Charity Shield) is the English season curtain-raiser that is played between the winners of the Premier League and the FA Cup the previous season. If a team wins the double of both Premier League and FA Cup, the other team in the Community Shield will be the runners-up from the Premier League. It is traditionally played at Wembley Stadium, although in some seasons the game has been played in Cardiff and Leicester. The fixture exists in other countries as a Super Cup of some sort, and also in European competition as the European Super Cup (a match between the Champions League winners and the Europa League winners).
In the Premier League era only 8 teams have won the Community/Charity Shield and gone on to win the league that season.
A type of run-up that some players make when striking a penalty kick. Ronaldo perfected the stutter penalty. It offers greater control over the ball but loses out on the power of a long run-up, also playing mind games with the keeper, waiting until the last moment to strike the ball, hoping that the keeper dives first.
Did you see how many stutter penalties were missed In the 2026 World Cup? Even the very best players like Messi, Mbappé and Kane missed them. Just go and smash the ball as hard as possible!
The Spidercam is a camera system that is suspended above the playing field by cables. It allows television broadcasters to move the camera both horizontally and vertically with speed and precision to get some incredible action shots during football matches.
In the quarter-final of the 2026 World Cup between Norway and England, England’s equalising goal came after a Norwegian goal kick allegedly hit one of the Spidercam cables, dropping to the feet of England midfielder Eliott Anderson, who started the move that led to Jude Bellingham’s first goal in a 2-1 victory. Argentina had the Hand of God…
A super sub is a player that performs well when being brought on as a substitute rather than starting a game, usually scoring a late winning goal. There are plenty of examples of players who have been given the tag of ‘Super Sub’ because of how good they were at reading the match when sitting on the bench, then coming on and exploiting the weaknesses they had picked up on. A good manager knows who and when to substitute on to change a match.
During Manchester United’s treble-winning season of 1998/1999, Alex Ferguson was lucky enough to have four top-quality strikers to call upon. With Andrew Cole and Dwight Yorke mostly leading the line, he had two super subs to bring on late in matches, none more famously so than the Champions League final where Teddy Sheringham equalised in the 91st minute and Ole Gunnar Solskjær scored the improbable winner in the 93rd minute.
Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA since 2016. He has been heralded as a hero by many African and Asian football federations as he has been key to expanding the World Cup to 48 teams and growing funds for the game in parts of the world that previously felt left out. To European and South American eyes, Infantino has become synonymous with a corrupt FIFA, becoming the centre of attention rather than the administrator the FIFA president should be as head of a non-profit organisation.
Days prior to the opening match at the 2022 Qatar World Cup, Infantino gave an on-the-cuff press conference where he bizarrely claimed that “today I feel gay. Today I feel like a women. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel like a migrant worker”. This was in response to heavy criticism of the choice of Qatar as host due to the poor treatment and deaths of migrant workers in the country when building the stadiums for the World Cup, alongside worries for the LGBTQ+ community in a country where homosexuality is illegal.
The No Racism Gesture was implemented by FIFA to empower players, team officials, and referees to take a stand against racism when it occurs during a match, whether on the pitch or in the stands. If a person wants to alert the referee that racist abuse has taken place they cross their hands at the wrists, prompting the referee to start a three-step procedure, the last step being the suspension of the match.
At the 2026 World Cup at the end of a contentious match between Argentina and Egypt, where Egypt had felt hard done by, coach Hossam Hassan made the No Racism Gesture in front of the referee. Post-match, Hassan claimed the officials favoured the World Champions in the 3-2 victory for Argentina.
Under Article 27 of the FIFA Disciplinary Code (FDC), the FIFA Disciplinary Committee has the discretion to suspend disciplinary action that has been taken by a referee in a previous match. For example, a red card can be suspended, with a probationary period of anywhere up to four years. If the player in question commits another act of a similar nature within the defined suspension period, the sanction is reactivated alongside any additional disciplinary measures.
In the 2026 World Cup, Article 27 was quoted by FIFA when USA striker Folarin Balogun had his red card suspended in time for USA to face Belgium in the last-16. The controversy surrounded the alleged phone call from US President Donald Trump to FIFA President Gianni Infantino, asking him to remove the suspension so Balogun could play. He did, Balogun played, and USA got pumped 4-1 by Belgium, the hosts knocked out.
Top bins is football slang for goals that are scored where the ball hits the very top corner of the net - near the stanchion or the ‘postage stamp’ where the crossbar meets the posts. It takes high precision and power to place the ball in such a hard-to-reach area of the goal. It’s the peak of shooting, often a worldie.
In the penultimate match of the 2018/19 season, Vincent Kompany scored a thunderbastard of a goal, right in the top bins. Manchester City beat Leicester 1-0 that night and won the league with 98 points to Liverpool’s 97. Top bins, big grins.
Italian for “biscuit”, it is a term used when two teams enter a final group game or league fixture knowing a particular results – usually a draw – eliminates a third side and suits both the teams playing just fine. It originates from historical horse-racing cheats, where targeted horses were fed a ‘biscuit’ laced with sedatives prior to a race. In football, sometimes teams genuinely play for a point and there is no outright collusion. If a scoreline suits both sides it’s natural they play to that result. The term is rooted in Italian football but applies wherever groups are involved.
The classic biscotto – before the word existed – was West Germany 1-0 Austria at the 1982 World Cup. When West Germany scored early, both sides knew a 1-0 scoreline would send them both through to the next phase at Algeria’s expense. The crowd booed, the Algerian FA lodged a complaint but the result was upheld. It led to future tournaments changing format where all last group matches kick off simultaneously. A modern twist saw Algeria play Austria at the 2026 World Cup, where a 2-2 going into injury time would send both teams through. Instead, Algeria scored in injury time, before a dramatic 96th minute equaliser from Austria locked in the script. 3-3, both went through.
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