Football Shout-out: Missing Chances

Jack: Hello and welcome to Premier Skills English - Football Shout-out 

Rich: Football shoutout is the series that teaches you the language you need when you’re watching the game.

Jack: Hi everybody my name’s Jack 

Rich: and my name’s Rich and welcome to our latest Football Shout-out where we talk about the English you need when you’re watching football.

Jack: If you listened to our last lesson, you will remember this:

Rich: Come on! We need to get the ball off them. Get stuck in!

Jack: That’s it! Good tackle. You’ve got time. Pass it. Pass it! Man on! Ohh. Straight into touch. Come on?!

Rich: We need to keep hold of the ball.

Jack: We need to get it in the box. There’s only a couple of minutes left.

Rich: That’s it. Down the line. Go on skin him. That’s it, go on ... cross it!

Jack: Go on. Have a pop! Goal!! Get in!! 

…

Rich: We need to hold on to this. Here they come. Get rid of it!! Get it out!

Jack: That’s it. Take it to the corner. That should do. Referee! Come on! That’s got to be it (final whistle sounds - crowd cheers)

Rich: Our last lesson was all about what we shout at our own players when watching a game. If you haven’t heard the lesson, there is a link on the side of this page for you to go back and listen and learn lots of instructions that we scream at our own players during a match.

Jack: This lesson is all about what we shout when we see a player miss a chance.

Rich: You might have heard some expressions like What a miss! And that was close before. In this podcast, we’re going to look at some expressions that might be new for you.

Jack: The phrases and expressions we use often depend on whether it’s our player that has missed a chance or a player on the other side!

Rich: But more often we use the same phrases, we might just be a bit softer when it’s our own player.  Listen to this:

Jack: Go on! Have a shot!

Rich: Unlucky! Against the post!

Jack: Hold on! He’s gone round the keeper. Oh no! What a sitter! I can’t believe he’s missed that.

Rich: My nan could do better than that and she’s 83!

Jack: He’s got to be putting chances like that away. That’s three he’s missed.

Rich: He couldn’t hit a barn door with a banjo this afternoon!

Jack: Penalty!

Rich: Oh no. Look who’s taking it! He hit the last one straight at the keeper!

Jack: Here we go! Oh no! He’s skyed it.

Rich: I can’t believe he’s fluffed another one. That’s miles off target. 

Jack: I think we might have to settle for a draw today. We couldn’t score in a month of Sundays.

Rich: We’ve definitely not got our scoring boots on today.

Jack: Every striker misses chances. Why do you think we are surprised when a player doesn’t score?

Rich: I don’t know. We expect our strikers to score every time, but they never do. Do you know who was the most clinical striker in the Premier League last season?

Jack: Nope.

Rich: It was West Ham’s Mexican striker, Javier Hernandez who scored with 27% of his shots.

Jack: So, everybody misses. In fact, players miss more often than they score or the goalkeeper makes a save.

Rich: And, sometimes players miss sitters, too.

Jack: A sitter. A really easy chance to score. When a player misses an easy chance you can say ‘What a sitter!’.

Rich: I guess we call a sitter a sitter because the chance or opportunity is so easy you could score while sitting on the floor.

Jack: You could also say ‘what a chance’ or ‘what a miss’ when a player misses an easy chance to score.

Rich: In the roleplay, Jack said I can’t believe he missed that. 

Jack: This is when we get lots more expressions - talking about how you feel about the miss or the player that missed. 

Rich: If it’s your player that has missed you might say something like ‘he’s got to be putting chances like that away’ or ‘he should have buried that’. Both of these mean he should have scored and show disappointment and frustration more than anything else. 

Jack: But we use some phrases to insult or make fun of the player a little. Rich said my nan could do better than that - nan is an informal word for grandmother. He also said he couldn’t hit a barn door with a banjo. Where did you hear that?

Rich: I can’t remember, but it’s funny. It means you can’t do something that is really easy to do - score a sitter. I’ve only ever heard this expression connected to football and strikers who miss chances. 

Jack: It’s not only sitters that players miss though and there are other ways to describe misses.

Rich: A shot can be ‘miles off target’ or you can say ‘that’s nowhere near’ or ‘that’s well wide’.

Jack: You get lots of expressions when a player misses a penalty, too. If a player hits the ball over the crossbar you can say he’s skied it.

Rich: Or another two are that’s straight at the keeper or that’s straight down the keeper’s throat. This means that the player kicked the penalty down the middle to the goalkeeper.

Jack: My favourite is more general and it’s the verb to fluff which means to make a mess of a chance. You can say oh no he’s fluffed another one if he’s your player or if he’s on the other side you might say he’s fluffed that up.

Rich: We’ll look at these phrases and a few more in the lesson which you can find below this podcast.

Jack: Listen again. Do you understand everything now?

Jack: Go on! Have a shot!

Rich: Unlucky! Against the post!

Jack: Hold on! He’s gone round the keeper. Oh no! What a sitter! I can’t believe he’s missed that.

Rich: My nan could do better than that and she’s 83!

Jack: He’s got to be putting chances like that away. That’s three he’s missed.

Rich: He couldn’t hit a barn door with a banjo this afternoon!

Jack: Penalty!

Rich: Oh no. Look who’s taking it! He hit the last one straight at the keeper!

Jack: Here we go! Oh no! He’s skyed it.

Rich: I can’t believe he’s fluffed another one. That’s miles off target. 

Jack: I think we might have to settle for a draw today. We couldn’t score in a month of Sundays.

Rich: We’ve definitely not got our scoring boots on today.

Jack: So, there are a few expressions you can use when a player misses a chance. 

Rich: We’ve got some activities to help you remember the phrases that we’ve been speaking about in the lesson below this podcast.

Jack: We’ll be back soon with our next football English lesson, which will be about phrases football fans use when their team is losing.

Rich: Bye for now and enjoy your football.