(to) Tap Up
To illegally or secretly approach another team’s player in order to try to persuade them to join your club. Clubs are not supposed to talk to a player who is under contract at another club – they must ask permission from their club first. But tapping up another player is still very common in football.
- Example: Tottenham have accused Manchester United of tapping up their player. They think Manchester United didn’t follow the rules about buying a player and met Berbatov secretly (2009).
- Example: What is tapping up? Dark side of football transfer dealings revealed after Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk embarrassment (Daily Mirror, June 9 2017).
More Vocabulary
- See The Language of Transfers main report.
- Transfer request
Let us know if you hear this phrase or how this might be said in another language by dropping us a line at: admin@languagecaster.com. You can also find many more examples of soccer vocabulary by going to our football cliches page here and our huge football glossary here.
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