The European Championship qualifiers started last week and there were good performances from England, Germany, Holland and Italy who won both of their games comfortably. However, Portugal have had a dreadful start to their campaign with a defeat and a home draw, while there was bad news for many Premier League players as Defoe, Dawson, Walcott, Van Persie and Kuyt all suffered what could be long-term injuries. This weekend sees the return of European league football, while on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week sees the return of the Champions League group stages. These stories and more all feature on this week’s languagecaster.com’s weekly football podcast. For more football news come to our site, read the posts, listen to our main reports and check out our links section.
________________________________________
FEATURED POSTS
Automatically receive the podcast each week by clicking on the icon 
________________________________________
PREDICTION
This week’s featured match sees Tottenham travel to Werder Bremen in the Champions League Group A. Below are the languagecaster team’s predictions.
________________________________________
FOOTBALL EXPRESSION
This weeka€™s English for Football phrase is a€˜to spare your blushesa€˜. This phrase can be broken down into two parts: To spare which here means to prevent and blushes which is a word used to describe someone turning red in the face due to embarrassment. So, when we put these two together the phrase spare your blushes means to prevent embarrassment. In football this is used when a team that is heavily expected to win struggles to do so until the very end of the game and this is what happened with Scotland in their game against minnows Liechtenstein. Trailing 0-1 the Scots came back to win in the 97th minute thanks to a goal from Stephen McManus which spared his team’s blushes. To spare your blushes.
Click here for more football cliches and football phrases.
________________________________________
This week’s QUIZ QUESTION:
How many different sides have won the Champions League since its modern formation in 1992?
a. 6
b. 8
c. 10
d. 12
Answer next week.
The answer to last week’s question about how many nations have won the European Championship is 9: Germany; Italy; Spain; Denmark; Greece; USSR; France; Czechoslovakia and the Netherlands.
________________________________________
Come along to our online shop and browse books and DVDs related to football and English language teaching and learning.
________________________________________
Check out the site for the latest polls – at www.languagecaster.com
Click here admin@languagecaster.com if you want to have your say on our weekly podcast.
You can also follow us at Twitter
