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On this week’s show Damon and Damian take a look at cup competitions in England also Damon has a new English for Football phrase.Try out our worksheets or online quiz to help you practice your listening and vocabulary skills.

• Transcript

We all know that football is a simple game - whichever team scores more goals wins, and this simplicity is embodied in the idea of cup football. It is death or glory, if you win you progress to the next round and if you lose you are out and you don’t play any more, nothing could be simpler.

Cup football has been big news this week with domestic knock out tournaments taking place all around Europe: the FA and Carling Cups in England, Italy’s Coppa Italia and the Copa del Rey in Spain. In Italy and Spain these cup competitions have never really appealed to the footballing public with few tears shed by managers when their team was knocked out and fewer fans bothering to even attend games. This, however, was never a problem in England as the FA Cup was part of the fabric of the game. Huge crowds flocked in search of glory or to see potential shocks, replays, penalties and to enjoy the romance of the Cup as teams fought hard to stay in the competition. But times have changed.

Though not as dramatic as the Italian or Spanish versions the cup competitions in England have definitely lost a bit of their glamour. Managers are so focused on keeping their team in the Premier League, with all its financial rewards, that having a cup run is seen as an obstacle to the safety of the club. Previously a team would have been heavily fined if they fielded a weakened side but now the clubs act with impunity or hide behind the guise of blooding young players in order to avoid their top players participating in the cup.

Maybe a change in format would help. In Germany the ‘bigger’ club always has to play away from home against a smaller team ensuring the chance of an upset, while the UEFA President, Michel Platini, is still attempting to give a Champions League place to the domestic cup winners. These suggestions are admirable in their attempts to reinvigorate the Cup format but it is attitudes rather than rules that need to change. Until clubs, managers and players respect the history, tradition, simplicity and excitement of knock out football then the FA Cup may become nothing more than a reserve team competition in the future.

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