Football Cliches

How good is your knowledge of the language of soccer? This is languagecaster.com’s weekly football language review quiz with five questions for you to answer. During each week of the season check our twitter feed, read our posts, and learn phrases, cliches and words related to football, to help you answer the quiz. This week is a review of our previous 4 quizzes!

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How good is your knowledge of the language of soccer? This is languagecaster.com’s weekly football language review quiz with five questions for you to answer. During each week of the season check our twitter feed, read our posts, and learn phrases, cliches and words related to football, to help you answer the quiz.

continue

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Each week the languagecaster team will explain a football phrase or cliche for learners of English who love the sport. On this week’s show we introduce the phrase ‘a sweet strike’. Click on the link below to learn about the word or phrase, while you can also read the transcript. You can also find many more examples by going to our football phrase page here football cliches here and our huge football glossary here.

Listen here: A sweet strike

This week’s football phrase is a sweet strike. To strike is a verb, which means to hit, and in football to kick or to shoot, and in this phrase strike is used as a noun. The adjective sweet means very good, beautiful or great, and often is used when the player hits the ball in the perfect place. In combination, a sweet strike means a fantastic shot, perhaps a volley that is beautifully timed, an unstoppable piledriver, or a great free kick. The phrase can also be used with strike as a verb, as in, he struck the ball sweetly. This weekend, Gareth Bale scored a goal against Manchester City with a sweet strike on the edge of the area, but it wasn’t enough to stop his side, Spurs, from losing. A sweet strike.

How good is your knowledge of the language of soccer? This is languagecaster.com’s weekly football language review quiz with five questions for you to answer. During each week of the season check our twitter feed, read our posts, and learn phrases, cliches and words related to football, to help you answer the quiz.

continue

How good is your football vocabulary? This is languagecaster.com’s weekly football language review quiz with five questions for you to answer. During each week of the season check our twitter feed, read our posts, and learn phrases, cliches and words related to football, to help you answer the quiz.

continue

How good is your football vocabulary? This is languagecaster.com’s weekly football language review quiz with five questions for you to answer. During each week of the season check our twitter feed, read our posts, and learn phrases, cliches and words related to football, to help you answer the quiz.

continue

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Each week the languagecaster team will explain a football phrase or cliche for learners of English who love the sport. On this week’s show we feature the phrase ‘to stay the course’. Click on the link below to learn about the word or phrase, while you can also read the transcript. You can also find many more examples by going to our football phrase page here football cliches here and our huge football glossary here.

Listen here: To stay the course.mp3

This week’s languagecaster football phrase is also a phrase used in horse racing. It is ‘to stay the course‘. The course in the phrase refers originally to the racetrack horses ran on, but when the phrase is used in football ‘course‘ becomes the season – in the Premier League in England the season is 38 matches.’To stay‘ means to last, to be able to complete, to finish, but also it has the added nuance of keeping the same good performance level. So, to stay the course means to finish the season strongly, to continue playing as well as now. As we start 2012 there are 18 games left in the season and Manchester City are playing well and are three points clear, but can they stay the course? Can they keep top spot until May? To stay the course.

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Each week the languagecaster team will explain a football phrase or cliche for learners of English who love the sport. On this week’s show we feature the phrase ‘to pit against’. Click on the link below to learn about the word or phrase, while you can also read the transcript. You can also find many more examples by going to our football phrase page here football cliches here and our huge football glossary here.

Listen here: To pit against.mp3

This week’s languagecaster football phrase is ‘to pit against‘. The ‘pit‘ in this phrase originally meant the noun ‘pit‘ – a fenced area where cocks or dogs were put to fight each other. In this phrase pit is a verb and it means to put against, or to draw against in a competition. To pit team A against B means that team A will play team B in a competition or tournament. So, last week the FA Cup 3rd round draw was made in England and it pitted Manchester City against Manchester United. It is also used to talk about players: for example, this week’s El Clásico pits Messi against Ronaldo.

To pit against

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Each week the languagecaster team will explain a football phrase or cliche for learners of English who love the sport. On this week’s show we feature the phrase headless chicken. Click on the link below to hear the word or phrase, while you can also read the transcript below that. You can also find many more examples by going to our football phrase page here football cliches here and our huge football glossary here.

Listen here: To wind someone up.mp3

This week’s phrase for football is ‘to wind someone up‘. When you wind someone up, you make them angry by making cheeky or insulting remarks. If you are wound up, you are angry. Football players often try to make their opponents lose their concentration, or lose their cool, by winding them up – perhaps by commenting about how they look or how they are playing. In our review of the football on this week’s show we talked about Luis Suarez being charged with racism – Evra will claim that Suarez was winding him up by racially insulting him, while Suarez may claim he was both players were winding each other up, but with no racist language involved.

To wind someone up

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Each week the languagecaster team will explain a football phrase or cliche for learners of English who love the sport. On this week’s show we feature the phrase headless chicken. Click on the link below to hear the word or phrase, while you can also read the transcript below that. You can also find many more examples by going to our football phrase page here football cliches here and our huge football glossary here.

Listen here: Headless chicken.mp3

This week’s English for football phrase is, headless chicken, which means that a player or a team is running around very quickly without any control, without any plan. If you chop a chicken’s head off, famously, they still can move, but of course they cannot think. Commentators or fans may say, a player or a team is ‘like a headless chicken‘, ‘playing like headless chickens‘, and the most common ‘running around like a headless chicken‘. This is what Daniel Agger said of his Liverpool teammates in their 1-1 draw with Swansea at Anfield last weekend; he said, “Sometimes we looked like headless chickens running around after the ball.”

Headless chicken