I have seen the word "up" and "down" often used interchangeably when reading live football text commentaries
What is the exact meaning of "up" and "down" in football? And what is the difference between the two?
Every time West Ham attacked down the right, they got in behind Swansea's defence.
28 Liverpool 0-1 Wolves
Liverpool on the hunt to level the game and Nunez has the bit between his teeth as he surges up the right wing but his cross is overhit and Gakpo can't get on the end of it.
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Verb + up the right...
Verb + down the right
Verb + up the pitch, etc.
Win the ball high up the pitch.
Down the other end.
Up the other end.
An excellent question! If expanded to the use of "up" and "down" in general English you could probably squeeze a PhdD out of it. Why does someone "come up" to Oxford or cambridge but get "sent down" if they're naughty? It's not as if either place is on a hill. But in terms of football I've always wondered the same thing. Does it possibly reveal a secret bias on the part of the commentator? With their preferred team referred to as "up" here and the less favoured rivals as "down there"? Or could it just be dependent on where the commentator is sitting? Although they're usually right opposite the centreline aren't they? Â
A search in languagecaster's football match corpus finds the following interesting results:
- down the right/left - 104 occurrences
- up the right/left - 1 occurrence*Â
So, while both down and up patterns are of course grammatically possible, the structire V + down the right is by far the most common.
*The defender Jack Stacey, a summer signing from Luton, charged up the right flank and his low ball bobbled across the six-yard box
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