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Transcript
This week’s English for Football phrase is ‘to spare your blushes‘. This phrase can be broken down into two parts: To spare which here means to prevent and blushes which is a word used to describe someone turning red in the face due to embarrassment. So, when we put these two together the phrase spare your blushes means to prevent embarrassment. In football this is used when a team that is heavily expected to win struggles to do so until the very end of the game and this is what happened with Scotland in their game against minnows Liechtenstein. Trailing 0-1 the Scots came back to win in the 97th minute thanks to a goal from Stephen McManus which spared his team’s blushes. To spare your blushes.
Example: Hart’s blushes spared by late Toure penalty for Man City (Eurosport, 31 October 2015)