Archive for September, 2010

 Print This Post | Subscribe: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Good for the three London teams in the Champions League, bad refereeing decisions in England and Alex Ferguson in the ugly section again. These and more stories feature in our football review of the week for learners of English who love football.

Good

Great performances by the three London sides in the Champions League this week. Chelsea won comfortably 2-0 at home against French side Marseille while Arsenal won 3-1 away in the intimidating atmosphere of Belgrade against Partizan. Tottenham’s first ever Champions League season is proving to be an exciting one and they won 4-1 against Dutch champions Twente though they needed three penalties to do so. Central figure was Rafael Van de Vaart who made one, scored another, missed a penalty and was sent off. It’s never dull at the White Hart Lane.

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 Print This Post | Subscribe: Predictions

In this week’s predictions we take a look at some big match ups in Europe – Inter v Juventus looks especially interesting – and we take our first look at some matches in Japan. J-League leaders Nagoya face a potential banana skin against lowly Sendai, while challengers Kashima have a tough game against Shimizu.

People are always guessing what is going to happen in the future. It may be, ‘Is it going to rain tomorrow?’ ‘Will my team win the league?’ or  ‘Do you think I should invest my money in this company?’ Predicting the future is part of our daily life and our everyday conversation. You don’t have to be a Nostrodamus to try to predict what will happen in the future. Of course, at languagecaster.com, we are always trying to predict the score of matches in the world’s beautiful game, football!

Read below to learn the language of predictions.

In English, if you want  to make guesses about the future, or make predictions, there are a number of ways you can do so. Let’s look at talking about football matches as examples – but the language can be used for most guesses about the future.

1. will

Question (WH): Who do you *think will win (between Chelsea and Manchester United)? continue

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This week on languagecaster.com’s football podcast we focus on the Champions League and who will win it, but also which team’s are dark horses. Remember you can also:

Automatically receive the podcast each week by clicking here

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 Print This Post | Subscribe: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Good for the top teams in the Premier League and the Bundesliga as Chelsea and Mainz keep on winning – five out of five, but bad for Roma and their coach, Ranieri, as they plummet down the table in Serie A. Meanwhile, a return to football for a player convicted of assaulting a woman is ugly news this week.

Good

Great for Mainz in the German Bundesliga as they make it five wins out of five and top the league with 12 goals scored. Most pundits put Mainz’s success down to their young manager, Thomas Tuchel, who kept them in the Bundesliga last year despite no 1st team coaching experience before he was promoted. The strong start of his team has meant that there are already rumours that Tuchel will be leaving next summer to a bigger club. Rumours that he rejects. Less surprising, but impressive nonetheless has been Chelsea’s start to the season – again five wins out of five, but with an incredible average of four goals a game. Can the two teams keep up their perfect starts this weekend as they both face tough opposition?

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 Print This Post | Subscribe: Predictions

On this week’s predictions, the champions of the big four leagues in Europe will be trying to stamp their authority on their leagues in some tricky ties. While in the Champions League, AC Milan will hope to make it six points from two games when they take on Ajax, and Valencia will be hoping their great domestic form translates into a victory against European heavyweights, Manchester United. Our guest predictor is Liam, an Aston Villa fan.

A great week for Bundesliga side Mainz but a bad week for Italian giant Roma and Premier league team Liverpool as they both struggle at the start of the season. These stories and more all feature on this week’s languagecaster.com’s football podcast. For more football news come to our site, read the posts, listen to our main reports and check out our links section. continue

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 Print This Post | Subscribe: Main Listening Report | Complete List Here

Each week on languagecaster’s podcast we feature a main listening report and on this week’s show we look at the Champions League and ask some football fans which team they think might be winners next May in London. You can listen to the report by clicking the link below and can also read the transcript. Explanations of vocabulary in bold appear at the foot of the post.

Transcript

Introduction

The second round of matches in the group stage of the Champions League are to be played next week, so on this week’s main report we thought we’d ask some football fans their opinions on the team they thought are favourites to win it and which side might be a dark horse.

John

DF: So, which team do you think is going to win this season’s Champions League, John?
John: I think Chelsea are going to win it this season. The reason I think they’re going to win is because as a team they’ve grown over the last few years and at club level they’re absolutely fantastic and they seem to be taking the same form with them to the European level. continue

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 Print This Post | Subscribe: Weekly Football Phrase

Every week during the 2010-11 season, the languagecaster team explain a football phrase or cliché for learners of English who love the sport. Click on the link below to hear the word or phrase and you can also read the transcript below that. You can find many more examples by going to our football phrase page here football clichés here and our huge football glossary here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

On this week’s podcast we focus on one of the most interesting and progressive teams in Germany: FC St Pauli. Remember you can also:

Automatically receive the podcast each week by clicking here

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