Why Are Nutmegs So Embarrassing?

The 'nutmeg' is so embarrassing because it is a legitimately difficult move to pull off. It'd be like dribbling the ball between the defenders legs in basketball.

Why is a nutmeg so humiliating?

"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 ...

Why is it called getting nutmegged?

(1) According to Peter Seddon, author of Football Talk: The Language and Folklore of The World's Greatest Game, the term has its roots in the dodgy practices of the nutmeg trade when some exporters would mix in lumps of wood with the cargo to trick buyers into thinking they'd received the full weight of nutmeg they'd ...