Soccer Player Nicknames, Explained

Most of the best nicknames in soccer were not handed out by marketing departments. They came from brothers, from crowds, from one sentence in a press conference, or from a celebration a player did without thinking.

Here is where the famous ones came from.

La Pulga: Lionel Messi

"La Pulga" is Spanish for "the flea."

It started at home. Two of Messi's older brothers called him "La Pulgita," the little flea, when he was small. The shortened version followed him into professional soccer and stuck.

It works because it describes the playing style as well as the height. A flea is small, quick, impossible to catch and impossible to shake off.

O Fenômeno: Ronaldo Nazário

"O Fenômeno" is Portuguese for "the phenomenon."

The name attached itself to Ronaldo during his single season at Barcelona in 1996-97, when he scored 47 goals in 49 games. The point of the nickname was that nothing more specific covered it. Speed, power and technique had not previously arrived in one player in that combination.

It is also the cleanest way to separate him from the other Ronaldo, which is a problem the nickname was not invented to solve but has solved anyway.

El Pistolero: Luis Suárez

"El Pistolero" means "the gunfighter."

It comes from the celebration, in which Suárez mimes firing a pistol with his fingers. No single origin story is documented beyond that, which is unusual for a nickname this well known.

The Special One: José Mourinho

This one has a date and a transcript.

In July 2004, at his first press conference as Chelsea manager, having just won the Champions League with Porto, Mourinho said: "Please do not call me arrogant because what I say is true. I'm European champion. I'm not one out of the bottle. I think I'm a special one."

He named himself, in other words. Twenty years later it is still the first thing written about him.

Starboy: Bukayo Saka

Saka did not pick this one, and the club did not either. Arsenal fans did.

It arrived after his breakout run in the 2018-19 Europa League, when he was still a teenager. A performance against Eintracht Frankfurt, with his first senior goal and two assists, was the point at which the crowd decided what he was going to be called.

The term itself echoes The Weeknd's song of the same name.

The Pattern

Look at the five together and a split appears.

Two came from family or from crowds: La Pulga and Starboy. Two were descriptions that journalists and fans reached for because nothing else fit: O Fenômeno and El Pistolero. One was self-issued in front of a room of reporters: The Special One.

The ones that last are the ones that describe something true about how a player actually plays. A nickname that has to be explained does not survive.