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It’s the FA Cup fourth round this weekend. Manchester United have already avoided the banana skin of Yeovil Town, beating the fourth-tier team 4-0. But there are lots of interesting games to look forward to. Newport, also from the fourth tier, take on Tottenham. There’s an all Premier League affair with Liverpool hosting West Bromwich, and Manchester City face a tricky away tie against Cardiff city, currently third in the Championship, the second tier. If you have questions or comments, email us at: admin@languagecaster.com (Damon= DB; DamianA DF).
Football Language Podcast: FA Cup Fourth Round
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Transcript of the show
DB: You are listening to Languagecaster’s football-language podcast. Hello everybody. My name’s Damon and I’m based in Tokyo, which this week saw temperatures drop below zero and heavy snowfall for the first time in three years. It’s always nice to see the snow. Damian, has it snowed in London?
DF: Hello Damon. No snow here in London but lots of rain and wind – miserable January weather!
DB: Doesn’t sound good! Cold, wet and grey – never a good combination. So, what’s on the show today?
Line up
DF: Well, just before I exlpain that I’d like to remind listeners that they can read the transcript to the show by clicking on the post here at languagecaster.com – we’ve had a few questions about how listeners can improve their listening skills and their vocabulary.
DB: Good stuff.
DF: Well, this weekend is the fourth round of the FA Cup, so we’ll be focusing on that in our last section, predictions. To start we’ll talk about a few interesting news stories from the past week, we’ll introduce a few English for football phrases, and we’ve also got our weekly quiz question.
DB: Cool!
You’re listening to languagecaster.com (Al-Hilal SC fan from Sudan)
DF: And thanks for that message from Ahmed in Sudan! If you’d like to send a similar message – You’re listening to languagecaster.com with your favourite team, in English or your language, please send it to languagecaster.com. Ahmed, we took a look at how Al-Hilal are doing in the league, and it looks like it could be a good season for your team! Right, now, Damon what was good in the world of football?
Good
DB: Well, this isn’t new news really, but I read a report about it this weekend in The Guardian newspaper and thought it was perfect for a good story. As we see in the news nearly everyday, there are many people who have been forced to leave their homes and countries, especially from Syria and North Africa, because of wars and many flee, escape, to Europe. Many of them try to get to the UK but end up in camps in northern France near the port of Calais. Conditions in these camps are terrible, but there is a fantastic NGO that came up with idea of arranging football games for the young boys to take part in. This gives them a way to escape from their extremely difficult situation – football can be a way to bring people together and a bright light in a dark world. The group that organises these matches is theA Baloo Youth Centre. Brilliant work! Now, how about bad, Damian?
Bad
DF: World Club champions and of course holders of both the Champions League and La Liga crowns Real Madrid are having a bad time of it as they lost again at home – this time to Leganes, to go out of the Copa del Rey on the away goals rule. Zidane is feeling the pressure and if the Madrid side fail to progress past PSG in the next round of the Champions League then the manager may face the sack. And ugly?
Ugly
DB: It has not been a good week for women’s football here in the UK as the English national team, the Lionesses, are in the news again for all the wrong reasons. Remember that the team had been embroiled in controversy involving their former coach Mark Sampson and now controversy continues with the announcement of a new coach this week. Former Manchester United and England defender Phil Neville was given the role despite not having any previous managerial experience, while it also transpired that he had posted some sexist remarks on social media. Added to this is the fact that he did not even apply for the job – another example of poor management from the FA at a time when women’s football needs their support
Follow us
DF: Here’s the section where we ask you to spread the word and get in touch with us. you can do this via twitter andA Facebook! Recently we’ve heard from Ahmed who wrote on our Facebook page, ‘A very nice podcast. I enjoyed it a lot and the relegation listening report was absolutely fantastic with lots of football phrases. I like this one, “fellow strugglers”‘. Thanks a lot for that comment Ahmed and of course, listeners to the show can also follow us onA Instagram and if you want to contact us by email you can do so by writing to us atA admin@languagecaster.com.A We’d love to hear from you and spread the word!
Quiz Question
DF: OK, time for a quick quiz question.A Damon, it’s FA Cup fourth round weekend so does the question have an FA Cup flavour?
DB: Yes, indeed. We’d like to know which club has appeared in most FA Cup finals? They have done so 20 times but we want to know which team has the most FA Cup appearances?
DF: I don’t think it’s Spurs…
DB: We’ll have the answer at the end of the show.
DB: Next up we have our weekly look at some football language. First up here’s Damian with the football cliche, ‘scoring for fun’.
Football Language: Scoring for fun
DF: Now, this phrase, scoring for fun, describes a situation when one team is easily beating the other team. they find it very easy to break the opposition’s defence and score goals. In fact, it looks like all the of the players are relaxed and enjoying the game – they are having fun. So, the team is scoring goals and they are enjoying the game gives us the phrase, scoring for fun. We use this when a team scores a lot of goals and it is easy for them to score.
Football Language: Textbook penalty
DB: Now we are focusing on the phrase ‘textbook penalty’ as one of our listeners, José from Brazil, asked us via email for its meaning and in particular wanted to know the meaning of the phrase, ‘Max Meyer nudges the Germans ahead with a textbook penalty’ which he saw on the bbc.co.uk website.
Well, a textbook is something you use to study, and when you are learning to play a sport you receive instructions from coaches. If something is a€˜textbooka€™ it means it is exactly like the way you are taught. A textbook penalty, therefore, means a penalty that is a great example; it is one that reflects the way you should take a penalty. It could be used as a video to train young football players. To go back to your example, we can say that Max Meyer sent the goalkeeper the wrong way; he hit the ball low and in the corner – a textbook penalty.
DF: Great stuff and thanks to José for that question and remember that if you have any football-language questions then simply drop us a line, while of course you can also check out our huge football-language glossary here at our website.
DB: Right – next up it’s predictions. And we’re going to look at two games from the FA Cup fourth round taking place over the weekend and one game from next Wednesday when the Premier League has a full mid-week set of fixtures.
Predictions
Liverpool vs West Bromich Albion
DB: Our first game was Liverpool v West Bromwich Albion. What was your prediction Damian?
DF: Well, I thought that Liverpool would bounce back after their defeat at Swansea on Monday and thrash WBA – maybe 4-0, but it didn’t quite work out like that did it?
DB: No it didn’t. a 3-2 win for West Brom – the first loss at home for Liverpool since April 2017. Can we move on?
Cardiff City vs Manchester City
DB. What about our second game – Cardiff vs Manchester City?
DF: Some people thought there might be an upset here before the but I thought City would win this comfortably – probably 2-0. And I was right; it was 2-0.
DB: I thought the same thing but went for a 3-1 win for Manchester City. Cardiff are doing very well in the Championship and will be hoping to be promoted to the Premier League again this season, but Manchester City were just too strong.
Tottenham vs Manchester United
DF: Now our final game this week is from the Premier League. There is a set of fixtures on Tuesday and Wednesday.A Tottenham vs Manchester United, this is a big game for both sides but in particular for Spurs as they are 8 points behind the Red Devils so they would need to win this to stand any chance of closing the gap. Tottenham have done well against United in the past two seasons but those games were at White Hart Lane not at our temporary home of Wembley. My heart says a 2-0 home win but my head says a 1-1 draw with United coming to park the bus as they normally do against bigger sides. How about you Damon?
DB: I agree with you Damian, I think this is going to be a draw 1-1. Mourinho will believe a draw away at a strong team like Tottenham is enough and the team will be set up for that. A draw.
Quiz Answer
DB: What was the answer to the quiz question, Damian? Which team has appeared in most FA Cup finals?
DF: Well, the answer is Arsenal who have played in 20 finals, winning 13 of them.
DB:A Good stuff and we’ll have another question next week.
Good bye
DF: Right. That’s it for the show this week. Enjoy all of the football and we’ll be back next week with a focus on the languagecaster derby – Liverpool hosting Tottenham. Bye.
DB: Alright. Ta-rah!
DF: Bye bye.
Check out our glossary of footballing phrases here
If you have any suggestions, contact us at admin@languagecaster.com
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