Welcome to the second Learning English through Football podcast with Damon and Damian. On this week’s show we talk to an England fan about their recent poor showing as well as a Manchester City fan on why he is a City supporter.
Listen only to the main report on Manchester City here – the transcript and vocabulary will help you understand key phrases and improve your language skills
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Transcript: Fana€™s view a€“ Manchester City By Dave Barnard
Why Manchester City? Thata€™s a very good question. I know that in Japan and in many other countries most people know or have heard about Manchester United of course a€“ a very famous team. However, you may be interested to know that there is another team in Manchester and the team is called Manchester City.
The main difference between United and City – apart from the fact that United are far more famous and successful – is that City wear sky blue, sky blue shirts and white shorts. I mention that because when I was a kid, when I was about maybe 10 or 11 years old thata€™s the main reason why I chose to support Man City, as opposed to Man Utd. Or at least one of them. And the other main reason was not so much the team but the supporters of the club. For a lot of football fans in England ita€™s not only the actual team and the players who are on the pitch that you support but you also become involved in the atmosphere of a club and it used to be when the stands were all
standing – that means no sitting, you could go there and have a really, really good time, not so much watching the game but having a laugh, listening to some of the other fans and the comments that they made.
The main difference between United and City was that at United all the fans just
completely adored the team at the time, which as I remember was Bobby Charlton, George Best, Denis Law. On the other hand, City, which had a very good team at that time, whenever they lost the crowd used to really criticise them and attack them and so on. For me as a young boy of 10 or 11 I just found that rather more interesting to be critical of the team rather than just showing adulation all the time. And I think even now there is a€¦ that is a big difference maybe between the fans of City and United and thata€™s why that ita€™s very difficult for a City fan to switch over to supporting United. That may be similar in with other cities which have two teams, like Liverpool and Everton maybe, or even in with the London teams, Arsenal a€“ Spurs, Chelsea a€“ Fulham, and so on. But really that is the main reason why, even though I do agree that United have a great team at the moment and play great football, I still hate them. Ita€™s mostly because of the fans.
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I was born and brought up near Chester in the north west of England. I have always loved playing and talking about sport, especially football! Google | Facebook | Twitter | Mail | Website
