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Football Phrase of the Week: Rout
Hello everyone, my name is Damon, one half of the languagecaster team. This is our weekly short audio post on the language of football, and I’ll be talking about the word ‘rout’. If you have questions or comments about this or any other football phrase, or you have your own suggestion, then email us at: admin@languagecaster.com. You can also find many more examples of soccer vocabulary by going to our football cliches page and our huge football glossary. Just type languagecaster.com into your browser.
Right, first of all this word can be used both as a noun and as a verb. The other thing to note about this word is that it is another word connected with war or battles; if you’re a regular languagecaster listener you’ll know that there are quite a few phrases borrowed from the vocabulary of war used in football. Unsurprising when you think about it – two teams fighting for victory! OK, so the noun rout means, according to the Oxford dictionary: A disorderly retreat of defeated troops. Hmm, Ok, so that means a terrible defeat, and in football, if there is a rout, one team loses really badly and their players will leave the pitch knowing they were well beaten.
And, as I mentioned, it can also be used as a verb – to rout, to beat another team by a lot of goals, although with football this use is not as common as ‘rout‘ as a noun.
Let’s have a look at some examples. The first one is about Tottenham Hotspur’s game against Red Star Belgrade in the Champions League and is from a Guardian report: “The chances continued to come, with Son and Kane going close before the latter virtually passed the ball into the far corner to complete the rout.”
And here is another from a Telegraph headline: “Chelsea youth revolution continues at pace with seven-goal rout of Grimsby”.
OK, that’s the football word this week – rout!
And that’s it for this short football language podcast. Enjoy all the football, ta-ra!
Check out our glossary of footballing phrases here. If you have any suggestions, contact us at admin@languagecaster.com
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