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In this post we explain a football clicheA ‘to put it in the mixer‘ which is a phrase often heard when describing a direct style of play. You can read a transcript for this podcast below, while you can also check out our glossary of footballing phrases here and visit our site to access all our previous posts and podcasts. If you have questions or comments, email us at: admin@languagecaster.com.
Football Language Podcast: (to) Put it in the mixer
DF: Hello everyone, this is Damian from the Languagecaster.com team – helping learners who love football with their English language skills and we hope you are all doing well. In this short podcast we look at the phrase, ‘to put it in the mixer‘ which is often heard when describing a direct style of play – it basically means to knock a long ball into the opposition’s penalty area. Let’s take a look at the elements of this phrase. First the verb ‘to put‘, this means to cross or hit the ball long, while ‘it‘ refers to the ball. The last element of this phrase, ‘the mixer‘ is a way of describing the penalty area, the box, especially when it is crowded with players. Put these all together and we mean the ball is crossed or hit into the box where hopefully a player can score – maybe through a flick on or a deflection.
This phrase is often used when a team is desperate to find a late equaliser or a winner as fans and pundits urge them to pump the ball into the box – that’s another phrase for putting it in the mixer. We can also hear this phrase when a not so skillful team is playing – they are playing a kind of percentage football in which they ‘hit and hope‘ – they hit the ball towards the goal and hope something happens. When using this cliche we think about adjectives such as desperate, basic, old-fashioned and unskilled; in fact you might hear this phrase while playing a game in amateur football – ‘stick it in the mixer!’
- Example: Players line up waiting for a free kick to be put into the mixer (Guardian.co.uk, 8th May 2021)
- Example: In the 90th minute of the game the defender put the ball into the mixer in the hope of an equalising goal.
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Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in French).
Good Bye
DF: Yes, you are listening to languagecaster.com – that message was in French. Don’t forget that there’s a transcript to this show with lots of vocabulary support which you can access by coming along to our site. Maybe you can let us know how to say ‘put it in the mixer‘ in another language? Enjoy all the football and we’ll see you again soon. Bye bye.
More Vocabulary
- Football Language Podcast: Tactics
- Football Language Podcast: Playing the game
- Route one
- Long ball game
- Scramble
- Stramash
Michael Cox’s book on the development of football tactics in the Premier League uses this cliche in its title, The Mixer: The Story of Premier League Tactics, from Route One to False Nines (2017)‘ (From Amazon).
Learn English Through Football Podcast: A show for football fans to improve their English language skills
