Learning English Through Football Podcast: 2020 Men’s Olympic Final

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In this football language podcast we look back at some of the phrases that emerged from the 2020 Men’s Olympic Final between Brazil and Spain, including ‘to seize the ball‘ and ‘to surge away‘. You can read a transcript for this podcast 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.

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Learn English Through Football Language Podcast: 2020 Men’s Olympic Final

DF: Hello everyone, this is Damian from the Languagecaster.com team – I hope you are all doing well. Now, in our recent podcast we looked at some of the words and phrases from the 2020 Women’s Olympic final between Canada and Sweden, and today we look back at some of the language to describe Brazil’s win over Spain in the Men’s Olympic final from Yokohama and in particular to describe the winning goal from Brazil’s Malcolm.

Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Portuguese from Brazil).

OK, this is how the writer from the Guardian newspaper has described the winner in this gold-medal match. So, if a player seizes the ball it suggests that this player gets the ball under control maybe when other players are also trying to get it. Now, ‘to seize’ something means to grab it but clearly in football a player – an outfield player – cannot do this with their hands so ‘to seize the ball‘ suggests that a player has made a decisive move with the ball. Teams can also ‘seize control‘ in a game which means that one side dominates the other – maybe with more possession or more attacking play.

The next part of the description uses the verb ‘surge away‘ which here means that the player used his speed to move away from the defender – sometimes we can see or hear the phrase ‘the player surged away from the defender’ – so the defender was unable to catch the player. There is another expression which is sometimes used – the player showed a clean pair of heels to the defender which is a way of saying that the defender could only see the back of the feet of the attacker as they moved – or surged – away from them. The final part of the sentence describes how the ball entered the net. Malcolm hit, or struck, the ball really hard and it hit the back of the net which ‘billowed up‘ and this means that the net looked as if it were like a floating cloud or some rising smoke. It’s not a common expression in football but it beautifully describes the ball hitting the back of the net.

Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Spanish).

Good Bye

DF: Yes, you are listening to languagecaster.com – that message was in Spanish. Don’t forget that there’s a transcript to this podcast and lots of vocabulary support which you can access by coming along to our site. OK, that’s it for this short podcast – we hope you enjoyed our look at the phrases from the 2020 Men’s Olympic final and congratulations again to Brazil for retaining their Olympic title. Don’t forget you can find lots of football language on our site here at languagecaster.com, including a huge glossary of football expressions, cliches and other footballing terms. Enjoy all the football this week – the new seasons are starting again in Europe – and we’ll see you again soon. Bye bye.