In today’s look at the language of football newspaper headlines we feature the phrase: ‘Gareth wins the douBale ‘ from The Sun newspaper, which is all about Gareth Bale winning the best player and best young player awards in the English League this season. You can also find many more examples of football phrases here, as well as football cliches and our huge football glossary here.
The Language of Football Headlines – ‘Gareth wins the douBale’
Today’s language of football headline is from The Sun newspaper and is all about Gareth Bale the Tottenham and Wales player who was chosen as both the best player and best young player for this season in England. The newspaper headline writers have used a pun to describe the fact that he won both trophies by adding an extra letter ‘a’ to the word ‘double’ to coin the word ‘douBale’, that is, Bale won a double: two awards. They combined the word double and the name of the player, Bale. In fact, if we wanted to re-write this headline we could simply say that ‘Gareth Bale won both two player-of-the-year awards’.
See also an explanation of ‘the double’ in one of our football glossary posts.
