Unlocking the doors of footballing parlance

With the 2018 FIFA World Cup all but upon us, let’s indulge in some footballing idioms.

Perhaps the most flattering of all positional terms is the Enganche, which translates as ‘the hook’ in English, but is the Argentinian term for the role their ‘number 10’.

Unlike other attacking midfielders, the Enganche never defends and sits at the top of midfield to kick off transitions.

A ‘playmaker’ collecting the ball in transition is essential as forwards push forward past the Enganche to receive through-balls or passes into the wide space to open the opposition defence. He is the ‘hook’ through which all forward transitions pass.

Football terminology, across multiple languages invokes a lot of doors. There are hooks and bolts, and in English, the term ‘key’ gets used pretty broadly.

Why doors? Because woven into the narrative of the sport – accelerated under the heights of Inter Milan’s Catenaccio days – is the notion that defences lock-up their goals, and only artisan lock-picking (as opposed to a battering ram) can open them.

Every successful football side is more Ocean’s XI than Bonnie and Clyde. You need a team of players who all play a role, but invariably there is a master thief placed somewhere on the park (in any third) that is principal agent of that team’s forward play who can ‘steal’ a goal from a master defence.