Each week the languagecaster team will explain a football phrase or cliche for learners of English who love the sport. On this week’s show we feature the phrase headless chicken. Click on the link below to hear the word or phrase, while you can also read the transcript below that. You can also find many more examples by going to our football cliches here and our huge football glossary here.
Listen here: Headless chicken.mp3
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This week’s English for football phrase is, headless chicken, which means that a player or a team is running around very quickly without any control, without any plan. If you chop a chicken’s head off, famously, they still can move, but of course they cannot think. Commentators or fans may say, a player or a team is ‘like a headless chicken‘, ‘playing like headless chickens‘, and the most common ‘running around like a headless chicken‘. This is what Daniel Agger said of his Liverpool teammates in their 1-1 draw with Swansea at Anfield last weekend; he said, “Sometimes we looked like headless chickens running around after the ball.” Headless chicken