This post explains 
the football term ‘To put past’.
- Find out more about this phrase by reading the transcript below.
- You can also find many more examples of soccer vocabulary by going to our football cliches page here and our huge football glossary here.
Football Language: To put past
When a team scores a lot of goals we sometimes hear the verbal phrase ‘to put past‘ as in the example, ‘Spurs put five past Swansea City’. Here the winning team (Spurs) have scored five goals against their opponents (Swansea). This phrase is usually heard when a lot of goals are involved and one team has easily defeated the other team – so a typical construction would be Team A put (number of goals) past Team B. However, we would not usually hear the phrase ‘Liverpool put one past Newcastle’ as not many goals are involved – there has to be a sense of a thrashing or heavy defeat involved. To put past.
Example: Houghton hits two as England put four past Bosnia (BBC.co.uk, November 25th 2017).
Example: PSG hit seven past Celtic in the Champions League (BBC.co.uk, November 22nd 2017).
