This Week: Superman at Spurs

Hello my name’s Jack and welcome to the weekly round-up called This Week on Premier Skills English.

In This Week, we’ve got lots of interesting words and phrases to help you talk about football in English.

If you are listening to this podcast on Apple podcasts or Spotify you can also visit the Premier Skills English website at britishcouncil.org/premierskillsenglish where you’ll be able to download the podcast.

On the Premier Skills English website, you can read the transcript and join the Premier Skills English community by completing a language task in the comments section. This will really help you remember the new words and phrases from the stories from the Premier League.

The words and phrases we are looking at this week are: leg, to take something out on someone, ferocious, to take the wind out of someone’s sails, deflection, slick and overturned.

Listen out for these phrases in the headlines and stories.

After each story there will be a short language focus and then there will be a task for you to complete and then at the end of the podcast there will be a new football phrase.

But before that, I want to look at last week’s football phrase. If you didn’t hear it last week, here’s one more chance to guess now.

Last week’s football phrase was an easy one for football fans. The word was ******. This is a type of kick which is special because the player who kicks receives the ball from a high pass or cross and then strikes the ball before it hits the ground, without even a touch to control the ball. These can be really powerful and almost impossible to stop if they are on target.

Congratulations to Mobeckham from Turkey, Taha Gashout from Libya, Shohei from Japan, RamonRuiz and Daniel_06 from Mexico, Hsn and Mehmet Sisman from Turkey and Isshin and Hayato from Japan. You all worked out that the word I was looking for was volley.

Hello Wilson2103! You asked about a stinging effort. There are two parts to this. The first is effort. An effort is an attempt that is not successful. It’s the same as try. So if you tell someone nice try, you normally mean ‘you were close, but that wasn’t good enough’. So in answer to your question, an effort is not successful. The stinging part implies that it hit and bounced off the keeper with force and that it will have hurt his arms or wherever it hit him.

To Taha Gashout, I’m sorry that I did not get to your comment in time. I have a new colleague Parwiz who helps me read and check the comments on the website, but sometimes we don’t link up properly and are slow in updating the site. I will try harder to check the comments more frequently.

Before we get to this week’s football stories, here are the answers to the language challenge from last week.

Number 1: I wish you would train more. You have so much natural ability, if you trained more you could be brilliant.

Number 2: When the court decided that the company was guilty, it opened the floodgates to many more lawsuits.

Number 3: He spends hours in the gym every day in his quest for a perfect body.

Number 4: She was fed up with people writing her off because of her age.

Number 5: This was as fiercely contested a match as any international could be.

Number 6: My son was told off by his teacher because his work is often careless.

Number 7: Look at that guy go! He’s really going for it. He must be on a mission.

Number 8: I had a little cut on my finger so I put some disinfectant on it which really stung.

Number 9: She had been making a good recovery, but slipped yesterday and suffered a setback.

Number 10: If you play the guitar, you get hard skin on your fingertips from pressing down the strings.

OK, let’s get on with this week’s three football stories!

Chelsea put six past Southampton

Earlier in the week, Chelsea had been beaten by Real Madrid in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final tie. When the blues got off the bus at St. Mary’s Stadium in Southampton, the memory of that defeat must have been fresh in their minds; they had something to prove. And they did. From the moment the whistle was blown, Chelsea were on fire. Any anger or frustration the team felt at their midweek defeat was taken out on the Saints. Chelsea had 24 shots on goal compared to Southampton’s 4. Mason Mount and Timo Werner both scored twice and Marcos Alonso and Kai Havertz got one each.

Final score: Southampton 0 - Chelsea 6

The word and phrase I want to talk about from this story are leg and to take something out on someone.

Leg. Leg? We all know what a leg is. OK - yes, the normal use of the word leg is A1, but there is another use which means a stage of a journey or a competition. When I go to visit my family in Indonesia, I stop in Dubai on the way to see my sister. The first leg of my journey is from the UK to Dubai and then the second leg is from Dubai to Indonesia. In the Champions League, the knockout stages of the competition up to the final are played in two legs, with each team hosting their opponents. So Chelsea lost the first leg of their tie with Real Madrid and travel to Spain for the second leg.

To take something out on somebody is a phrasal verb that means to make someone suffer because of your own anger or sadness or frustration. It’s quite a normal thing for people to do, but it’s not fair. If a teacher is angry, he or she might be really strict with their class or grade their students harder. Then they would be taking their anger out on their students. We only take negative feelings out on others. So you might hear that someone is taking their frustration out on their partner or if you meet a friend who has had a hard day at work, if they are grumpy with you, you could say ‘Don’t take it out on me! I’m not your manager.’

Let's move on to the next story.

Lloris is a Superman for Spurs

Son Heung-min said Hugo Lloris was like a superman following an amazing string of saves at Villa Park. Son scored an early goal against Aston Villa who responded with a ferocious display. They dominated possession and hammered the visitors. If it weren’t for the skills of the Spurs keeper, at half time, they would have been 3-1 or 4-1 down. Five minutes after the break, Spurs scored again when Dejan Kulusevski drilled the ball into the bottom right corner. The second goal really took the wind out of their sails and Villa looked beaten. Son Heung-min sealed the deal after 66 minutes and made it a hatrick after 71.

Final score: Aston Villa 0 - Tottenham Hotspur 4

The word and phrase I want to talk about from this story are ferocious and to take the wind out of someone’s sails.

Ferocious is an adjective that means frightening and violent. It’s usually used to describe battles or wild animals. It’s similar to fierce, only I think it’s even stronger, wilder and more frightening. The examples in the dictionary are a ferocious dog ahd she’s got a ferocious temper. I like the word because it’s often used by newspapers to talk about political attacks. This makes me smile because political criticism is not really fierce or ferocious, it’s just people talking, but in football, the strength and physical power on display might make a team ferocious in attack.

If you take the wind out of someone's sails, you make them lose confidence or energy. I like this phrase because it brings to mind a sailing boat, perhaps a pirate ship or an old galleon. When the ship is sailing under sail, the sails billow in the wind and the ship makes good progress. But if the wind stops, if the wind is taken out of the sails, the ship slows and can’t make any further progress. So if someone is really excited about something, perhaps they are going on holiday and then they learn that the weather is going to be bad, perhaps there’s a storm coming, that would make them feel less excited, it would take the wind out of their sails.

Let's move on to the final story.

Premier League leaders go head to head

The competition between City and Liverpool this year is intense. Both teams are halfway through quarter-final ties in the Champions League and are set to face each other at Wembley on Saturday for the FA Cup semi-final. One point is all that separated the teams when they met at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday.

From the start, both teams tried to take control; the atmosphere was electric and the football was fierce. Following a foul in Liverpool’s half, Kevin De Bruyne ran with the ball through a knot of Liverpool defenders and fired a shot which took a massive deflection off Joel Matip and put the hosts ahead.

City looked particularly slick, but Liverpool showed their character when Diogo Jota equalised eight minutes later. Jesus scored to put City ahead again and again Liverpool equalised, this time Mohamed Salah fired the ball through for Sadio Mane whose first-time finish was emphatic.

Sterling looked like he’d got the winner for City in the second half, but the goal was overturned by VAR.

Final score: Manchester City 2 - Liverpool 2

The words I want to talk about from this story are deflection, slick and overturned.

We’ve covered the word deflection before in these podcasts, so I’ll just talk about it briefly. A deflection is when a shot hits another player and changes angle. Now, if the ball hits a player and the ball comes back in the direction of the shooter, then we would say it bounced off another player or was blocked by another player, but if the ball keeps going, just in a different direction, then it’s a deflection. It’s most commonly used when a player scores or has a shot on target that has hit another player and changed direction on the way.

I said that City looked particularly slick. You have to be a bit careful with this adjective. If you use it to describe something that a person does, it means that they are very skilful and look like they can do their job without trying hard. When I’m on a ferry, I love watching the people who tie the boat to the dock. They do the same job so many times everyday that they can become really good at it. They flick the rope and with a twist and a loop or two, they have secured the boat. These people are always particularly slick. You have to be careful though, if you describe a person as slick because of the way they speak, perhaps a sales person, then it is negative because it implies that they are not sincere or honest. City looked very skilful, the passing was tight and controlled, the movement of the ball seemed easy for them, they looked slick and polished.

The last word I want to talk about is overturned. We use this word to say that an official decision has been changed. It’s used to talk about legal judgements, criminal convictions are overturned and in this case, the judgement or decision of the referee. So in a sense, it’s the same as disallowed. The difference is that goals are disallowed and judgements are overturned, however when the judgement is a goal, they are effectively the same.

OK. That’s 7 words or phrases today. The words and phrases from the stories were: leg, to take something out on someone, ferocious, to take the wind out of someone’s sails, deflection, slick and overturned.

Listen to the headlines one more time to hear these words and phrases in context.

Chelsea put six past Southampton

Earlier in the week, Chelsea had been beaten by Real Madrid in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final tie. When the blues got off the bus at St. Mary’s Stadium in Southampton, the memory of that defeat must have been fresh in their minds; they had something to prove. And they did. From the moment the whistle was blown, Chelsea were on fire. Any anger or frustration the team felt at their midweek defeat was taken out on the Saints. Chelsea had 24 shots on goal compared to Southampton’s 4. Mason Mount and Timo Werner both scored twice and Marcos Alonso and Kai Havertz got one each.

Final score: Southampton 0 - Chelsea 6

Lloris is a Superman for Spurs

Son Heung-min said Hugo Lloris was like a superman following an amazing string of saves at Villa Park. Son scored an early goal against Aston Villa who responded with a ferocious display. They dominated possession and hammered the visitors. If it weren’t for the skills of the Spurs keeper, at half time, they would have been 3-1 or 4-1 down. Five minutes after the break, Spurs scored again when Dejan Kulusevski drilled the ball into the bottom right corner. The second goal really took the wind out of their sails and Villa looked beaten. Son Heung-min sealed the deal after 66 minutes and made it a hatrick after 71.

Final score: Aston Villa 0 - Tottenham Hotspur 4

Premier League leaders go head to head

The competition between City and Liverpool this year is intense. Both teams are halfway through quarter-final ties in the Champions League and are set to face each other at Wembley on Saturday for the FA Cup semi-final. One point is all that separated the teams when they met at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday.

From the start, both teams tried to take control; the atmosphere was electric and the football was intense. Following a foul in Liverpool’s half, Kevin De Bruyne ran with the ball through a knot of Liverpool defenders and fired a shot which took a massive deflection off Joel Matip and put the hosts ahead.

City looked particularly slick, but Liverpool showed their character when Diogo Jota equalised eight minutes later. Jesus scored to put City ahead again and again Liverpool equalised, this time Mohamed Salah fired the ball through for Sadio Mane whose first-time finish was emphatic.

Sterling looked like he’d got the winner for City in the second half, but the goal was overturned by VAR.

Final score: Manchester City 2 - Liverpool 2

Language Challenge

Right, now it’s time for you to think about the language again.

Here are seven sentences with gaps in them and you have to complete the gaps with the words and phrases from this podcast.

Number 1. I'm sorry you didn't get the job, but ______________.

Number 2. A ______ pass from De Bruyne to Sterling set up the goal.

Number 3. His shot took a _______ and sailed into the net.

Number 4. The Supreme Court __________ the decision and declared the defendant innocent of all charges.

Number 5. After the team’s defeat, the manager came in for some __________ criticism.

Number 6. When they lost their captain just before half-time, it really took _____________________.

Number 7. The last _____ of the race was Paris to London.

Leave your answers in the comments section on the Premier Skills English website.

Football phrase

Now it’s time for this week’s football phrase. This phrase will be the same in this podcast and the podcast on Friday so I will announce the answer and the usernames of people who have got it right next Monday ... or Tuesday.

This week’s football phrase is ** *****. This phrase means that somebody’s body is in good condition. The second part of the phrase is a word which means the physical form of a thing. You can say that someone is ** good ***** on ** bad *****. However, if you just say that someone is ** *****, it means that they are physically fit and healthy.

That’s all I have time for today. Before I finish, I just wanted to say that I hope you found this podcast useful, and I hope all of you stay fit and healthy and safe.

Bye for now and enjoy your football.