Soccer nicknames come from all sorts of places and varying origin stories. Some may be as simple as the color of the team’s home jersey. Others require backstories that are inextricably intertwined with the history of the club.
There are historic clubs like Arsenal (Gunners), Bayer Leverkusen (The Company’s Eleven), and West Ham United (The Irons and The Hammers) that derive their nicknames from their humble beginnings at works teams, clubs created for the benefit of the blue collar factory workers of the day.
Dig around the globe and you find fascinating nickname origin stories that tell the story of the club and their surrounding neighborhoods.
