Hard: To play someone off the park

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 hard so we’re looking at more difficult football phrases and idioms.

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 phrase to play someone off the park. 

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. 

Rich: Remember you can find transcripts for all of our podcasts on the Premier Skills English website.

Jack: 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 hard so we’re looking at more difficult football phrases and idioms. These phrases can be used to talk about football but are often useful when talking about other topics.

Rich: The phrase we are looking at in this episode is: to play someone off the park.

Jack: To play someone off the park is an idiom which means to be much, much better than someone else and to beat them easily.

Rich: The park in this idiom refers to the football pitch or the place where you are playing football.

Jack: Informal games of football or kickarounds happen in parks all over the UK at the weekend.

Rich: And some football stadiums are also called parks. Everton play at Goodison Park, Newcastle at St. James’ Park and Aston Villa at Villa Park.

Jack: When we say that a team played another off the park we are saying that one team was so good that the other team should leave the park or the pitch because they are not good enough to compete.

Rich: Usually when big teams play small teams in cup competitions or in world cup qualifiers the bigger team or nation plays the smaller one off the park.

Jack: In 2002, Australia beat American Samoa 31-0 in a World Cup Qualifier. Australia played them off the park.

Rich: You might also say it was a walk in the park for Australia.

Jack: That’s a bonus phrase for you - a walk in the park. It is used to describe something that was very easy and we can use it in and out of football.

Rich: But it’s not only big teams against small teams. Germany played Brazil off the park when they won 7-1 in 2014 at the World Cup in Brazil.

Jack: We can also use the phrase to get played off the park if we want to look at the phrase from a different point of view.

Rich: Brazil got played off the park in that game against Germany.

Jack: But we don’t only use this idiom when there are one-sided scorelines.

Rich: It often happens that one team defends for the whole game - they park the bus - and the other team has all the possession and loads of chances and what happens?

Jack: The team that’s been defending get one chance, score and win 1-0. You can play someone off the park and still lose or get played off the park and still win.

Rich: It’s a funny old game sometimes.

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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When did your team play someone off the park?

When did your team get played off the park?