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Weekly Football Phrase: (to) Fire Home

This week’s English for football phrase is the verb phrase to ‘Fire Home’.fire home

  • Find out more about this phrase by reading the transcript below and listening to the audio.
  • You can also find many more examples of soccer vocabulary by going to our football cliches page here and our huge football glossary here.
  • This post also features in our podcast show, along with a main report and our weekly predictions.

Fire Home

Scoring goals is what teams try to do in football, and there are many ways to describe the action of shooting and scoring. Today’s English for football phrase is the verb to fire home, which means to score a goal. To fire means to shoot: for example, to fire a gun is to shoot a gun. Football uses this verb, to fire, to describe a powerful shot, a shot that is like firing a gun, the ball is like a bullet. Home refers to the goal, so to fire home, means to hit a powerful shot into the goal – to score with a powerful shot. You can add other verbs before home to describe different kinds of shots – to stroke home, to blast home, to guide home. To fire home.

  • Example: Stoke led at the break when Peter Crouch fired home after Peter Odemwingie had hit the base of a post. (BBC report Feb 2014)
  • Example: The Spanish playmaker fired home his first goal since joining United for A£37m in January. (BBC report March 2014)
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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!
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4 comments
  • When “fire” is used with someone’s name, it mean to sack someone. Does this meaning fit in this context?

    England are celebrating a mammoth European Championship victory against Germany after Raheem Sterling and Harry Kane fired Gareth Southgatea€™s men into the quarter-finals.

    • Hi Dwi,

      Yes – to fire someone means to sack someone, but in this context ‘to fire’ means to score – to fire home = to score a goal. It is then often used like this with ‘past’ or ‘into’ to mean the players scored and therefore the team went ‘into’ the quarter finals. Both sterling and Kane scored so they fired England into the quarters. They fired England past Germany.

  • What does “fire” mean in this context?

    England are celebrating a mammoth European Championship victory against Germany after Raheem Sterling and Harry Kane fired Gareth Southgatea€™s men into the quarter-finals.

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