In this post, we talk about a common verb and noun combination ‘suffer a defeat’.
- 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: Suffer a Defeat
You will often hear people say a team suffered a defeat. The verb suffer and the noun defeat collocate – that is they often go together. Suffer has the feeling of pain, so using suffer a defeat emphasises the feeling of a negative result. Another verb that collocates, often goes with, defeat is fall, giving us the phrase fall to a defeat.
Example: “Aston Villa moved to within two points of the Championship automatic promotion places with a 1-0 win over Leeds. Lewis Grabban’s first-half header was enough to give them victory at Villa Park as Leeds fell to their 10th defeat of 2018.Paul Heckingbottom suffered his seventh defeat in 13 games since taking over as Leeds manager” (The Guardian, April 2018)
Example: Headline – Real Madrid suffer shock defeat at Girona on first visit to Catalan club. (The Guardian, September 2017)
