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Football Phrase of the Week: Round the Keeper
In this football phrase of the week we look at the expression, ‘round the keeper‘ after Manchester City player James McAtee scored for Manchester City against Crystal Palace at the weekend. You can read the transcript for this post 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 any suggestions or questions then you can contact us at admin@languagecaster.com.
DF: Hello everyone. This is Damian from the Languagecaster team and I hope you are all doing well. Welcome to this week’s football phrase, which is when we explain an expression from the weekend’s football. And today we explain the phrase, ‘to round the keeper‘ after James McAtee scored a goal by doing this for Manchester City against Crystal Palace in the Premier League.
Stinger: You are listening to Languagecaster (in Thai)
What does a player do when they are through on goal? This means that they have no opposition players near them and they only have the keeper to beat. Should they try and shoot early, or maybe try and sit the keeper down which means they feint, shimmy or dummy the keeper so that they fall to the ground which then makes it easier for the forward to score? Another way of scoring in this situation is lifting the ball over the keeper – to dink the ball over the advancing goalkeeper. But sometimes players will try and dribble around the goalkeeper and we call this to round the keeper.
So, to round the keeper means to take the ball around the goalkeeper – it’s another way of scoring in a one-on-one situation. And players who try this have to show skill and good technique but also demonstrate composure – they have to be calm so they can get around the goalkeeper. Sometimes if a player goes around the goalkeeper the angle becomes narrow and they don’t have enough space to shoot – the angle is too tight. But if a player slows down as they approach the keeper they can then pretend to go one way and instead go the other (a feint or shimmy) or they can try and beat the keeper by going to their left or right with the ball – to round the keeper.
Perhaps the greatest player at rounding the keeper was former Brazilian striker Ronaldo (O Fenomeno) who scored many goals like this in his career, including famously in a World Cup game against Ghana.
DF: So, here is an example of the phrase from the BBC website:
- Example: James McAtee finally found the target after wasting a couple of excellent chances on his first Premier League start, dashing on to Ederson’s punt downfield before rounding Henderson and applying the finish. (BBC.co.uk, April 12 2025)
Stinger: You are listening to Languagecaster (in French)
Yes, that message was in Italian, while we also heard from a Thai speaker during the show.
So, in this week’s football expression we looked at the phrase, ‘to round the keeper‘ after City’s James McAtee did this to score a goal at the weekend. Do you know of any other examples of players that have rounded the keeper to score? And how would you say this phrase in another language that you know? Can you try and maybe use this phrase in a sentence? Add it to our forum or to the comments section below.
Enjoy all the football this week and we’ll see you again later on in our regular weekly language podcast when we’ll be looking back at the European quarter-final second legs and we will also look ahead to the weekend’s fixtures including Aston Villa versus Newcastle in the race for Champions League places in the Premier League. And of course we’ll be explaining more football language. Enjoy the football this week, we’ll see you soon. Bye bye.
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