Feign Injury

The verb “to feign” means “to pretend”, so when a player is pretending to be injured we say that they feigned an injury. It is also used to describe the movement of a player with the ball; when they pretend to go one direction but instead go in another direction – it is similar in meaning to the verb ‘to dummy’. The verb to feign often collocates with a direction (left or right) so for instance you might hear a TV commentator say that a player has feigned right or feigned to the right, meaning that the player pretended to go right but actually moved to the left. In order to do this, the player may have dropped the shoulder, performed a step over or some other trick to try and get away from the opponent.

• Example: Messi feigned to go left and then attacked down the right side.
• Example: The player was booked for feigning an injury.