What does "spray" mean in football (soccer) context?
61 | Good counter from the Millers.
Crooks sprays the ball out to Ladapo who finds Giles in the area. His cross takes a deflection off a Reading boot and is eventually cleared.
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It's a fairly uncommon figurative usage. Sports commentators often say "odd" things, some of which make it into more general acceptance (but most don't - so far, including this one).
The reference is to forcefully expelling (as, say, sneezing forcefully expels saliva/mucus), so the primary implication is it was a sudden, powerful kick to make the pass. But you probably won't find any particularly relevant examples of this usage in dictionaries, and it's unlikely you'd ever want to use it yourself.
Perhaps a more relevant allusion than sneezing is spraying machine gun fire. Particularly noting that it would be extremely common to have written Crooks fires the ball out to Ladapo...
answered Mar 8, 2021 at 17:50
