Background. The nicknames of players of football teams make a separate group of Ukrainian football onomastics. These unofficial anthroponyms were not the object of a thorough analysis, although labeling football players with nicknames is a feature of football discourse.Сontribution to the research field. The present study raises the possibility that nicknames of Ukrainian football players, like other unofficial anthroponyms, were formed on the basis of the transformation of players’ surnames and names, as well as metaphorically.Purpose. To find out the origin and methods of creating unofficial anthroponyms of football players who played for the Lviv team “Karpaty”.Methods. The main methods of research include discursive analysis and description of actual material, obtained thanks to sociolinguistic methods of questionnaires and interviews of football players, football specialists, journalists and fans. Additionally, the method of quantitative calculations is involved.Results. Among the nicknames of the football players of Lviv “Karpaty” who played for this team in different years, the largest group is unofficial anthroponyms, based on surnames that have undergone a variety of transformations, primarily reductions of the creative base, as well as by adding diminutive suffixes to the reduced creative base. Less often they use diminutive forms of football players’ names as nicknames. Unofficial personal names formed from the patronymics of the players are very rare. Often nicknames of football players, which appeared as a result of the reduction of players’ surnames or the creation of diminutive forms of their names, are associated with Russian lexemes, thus indicating the influence of outside colonial and post-colonial naming trends on the formation of the unofficial Ukrainian football anthroponymicon. Many nicknames were formed metaphorically, when the basis of the transfer of signs by similarity was either the external features of the “Karpaty” players, or the specifics of the character, behaviour of football players, their extra-football interests, or a combination of internal and external characteristics at the same time.Discussion. Two main ways of creating nicknames for Lviv “Karpaty” football players prevail – the transformation of players’ surnames and names, and the appearance of unofficial anthroponyms based on metaphor. The perspective of further studies of the nicknames of Ukrainian football players is seen in recording and describing a complete corpus of unofficial anthroponyms of players of various football teams throughout the entire period of football development in Ukraine and in identifying the main trends of unofficial naming in the sphere of football.