Easy: Friendly

Premier Vocabulary is a mini-podcast for you to learn football English one word at a time. We have three different levels for you: easy, medium and hard.

This episode is easy so we’re looking at common football words and phrases. Things you use and need to know to play the game.

Summary

Learn more football vocabulary with Premier Skills English. Each lesson in our Premier Vocabulary section looks at one football word or phrase. This lesson looks at the word friendly. 

You can find more lessons on the side of this page.

Transcript

Rich: Hello my name’s Rich and welcome to Premier Skills English - Premier Vocabulary.

Jack: Hi there! I’m Jack. We’re here to help you with your football English. Premier Vocabulary is a mini-podcast for you to learn football English one word at a time.

Rich: We have three different levels for you: easy, medium and hard.

Jack: This episode is easy so we’re looking at common football words and phrases. Things you use and need to know to play the game.

Rich: The word we are looking at in this episode is friendly.

Jack: How are you doing today Rich? Did you have a good weekend? Shall we go out for a drink later?

Rich: That’s very friendly, Jack. Very nice. Maybe we could go to the coach and horses. It’s a nice family-friendly place. We could grab something to eat.

Jack: Good idea. The people there are always very friendly.

Rich: OK, so the word friendly is used as an adjective most to describe people or even places that are nice or pleasant in some way.

Jack: Or who are kind and do nice things for you. What about football though? I suppose your teammates are friendly - you’re probably friends with your teammates.

Rich: You’re probably right but the word we want to speak about is the noun - a friendly.

Jack: A friendly is a sports match between two teams that is not part of any official competition.

Rich: They are officially called friendly matches but we shorten it to just friendly.

Jack: Premier League teams usually play friendlies before the season start. These are called pre-season friendlies.

Rich: Or sometimes you might hear a behind-closed-doors friendly. These are matches that take place without fans and are usually played when players need to get match practice after an injury.

Jack: Pre-season friendlies, behind-closed-doors friendlies … when we use the plural, spelling is important, isn’t it?

Rich: Yes, we have to remember that a friendly ends in a ‘y’ but when we speak about ‘friendlies’ we drop the ‘y’ and add ‘ies’.

Jack: That’s right. When words end in a consonant plus a ‘y’ like ‘friendly’ we add ‘ies’ to make the plural. Omther examples are ‘baby’, ‘country’ or ‘factory’.

Rich: When words end in a vowel plus a ‘y’ we just add an ‘s’. Some examples are ‘boys’, ‘keys’ and ‘donkeys’.

Jack: So, are friendly matches friendly?

Rich: Normally, they’re not supposed to be overly competitive because nobody wants to get an injury but there are exceptions.

Jack: Exceptions?

Rich: Well, there’s a team who play in the Spanish top division called Villarreal. They played a small local team in a pre-season friendly.

Jack: And what happened?

Rich; They won 27-0. Not very friendly at all. They should call it an unfriendly!

Final whistle

Jack: There is the final whistle!

Rich: We’ll be back soon with more Premier Vocabulary from Premier Skills English.

Jack: Bye for now and enjoy your football.

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Why do clubs play friendly matches before the season starts?