This Week: Pep Guardiola

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 premierskillsenglish.britishcouncil.org 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.
___

Today, I want to talk about the most famous manager in the Premier League. I don’t talk about the managers much, but they are as important as the players and they are always interviewed after the match so you get to hear them speak and use football English.

It was quite hard to select the most famous manager. As an Arsenal fan, I wanted to talk about Mikel Arteta. I could also have chosen Jurgen Klopp as he’s very charismatic. Roy Hodgson is a legend. He first played for Crystal Palace in 1965 and has been a manager for over 40 years and has stood on the sidelines at over 850 matches. However, the manager I have selected today is Pep Guardiola who led Manchester City to the treble last season.

But before I start talking about Pep Guardiola and the vocabulary, I want to give you the answer to last week’s football phrase. If you didn’t hear it last week, here’s one more chance to guess now.

Last week, the football phrase was a *******. When a player transfers to a new club, they are often described as a ****** for the club or the clubs’ latest *******. It comes from a verb which means to write your name on a contract to show that you agree with it.

Congratulations to Hayato from Japan, to Hermosillo Moreno from Mexico, Ken from Japan, Ahmadamr1112 from Egypt, welcome to the podcast Ahmadamr1112. Congratulations to Leandro_Higuito02 from Colombia, to Bicooz from Egypt, Gockan_FPL from Turkey, welcome to Premier Skills English Gockan. Congratulations to Denis2000 from Belarus, to Hasan from Turkey, to Chen Meng Tso from Taiwan, to Vietnguyenngo from Vietnam, to
Shewa Dovski from Germany, to Takateeto from Japan, to Isshin from Japan and to Vinicius77 from Brazil. I hope I’m pronouncing yoru name properly this time Vinicius.

You all managed to work out that the phrase I was looking for was a signing.

Keep listening till the end of the podcast for a new football phrase.

Today, I am focusing Pep Guardiola. After I have spoken about Guardiola, I will look at some interesting vocabulary. At the end, I will challenge you with a language quiz.

Pep Guardiola

Pep Guardiola was born in 1971 in Santpedor which is a small town to the north of Barcelona in Catalonia. Pep is a nickname or a shortened form of Josep. Pep joined Barcelona’s youth academy, La Masia at the age of 13 and played his way through the youth teams, making his debut for Barca at the age of 19.

He stayed at Barcelona until 2001 when he moved to Brescia and then Roma in Italy and later played in Qatar and Mexico. He played as a defensive midfielder and was highly regarded for his anticipation, his composure on the ball, accurate passing, tactical awareness, and ability to read the game. He was described as the brains of Barcelona’s dream team and was on a list of the best deep-lying playmakers of all time.

Guardiola returned to Barcelona in 2007 to manage the Barcelona B team, which played in the third tier of Spanish football. In his first season in charge, he led the team to a place in the playoffs and secured promotion to the second division. This performance impressed the club owners enough to hand him the reins to the first team. In his first year, he won the league, the Copa del Rey and the Champions League, becoming the youngest manager ever to win the Champions League. In his second year, he did even better winning a record six trophies, the Spanish League, the Copa del Rey, the Champions League, the Spanish Super Cup, the European Super Cup and the Club World Cup, becoming the first manager in history to do so.

In 2013, Guardiola moved to Germany to manage Bayern Munich and took the team to the top of the Bundesliga, winning the league with seven games to play. And then in 2017, he moved to Manchester City.

Guardiola started his first season at Manchester City with a series of 10 wins and it looked like he was on track to enjoy the same sort of success that he’d enjoyed in Spain and Germany, but the Premier League proved to be more of a challenge and City finished the season without any silverware.

Having identified the club’s weaknesses and filled the gaps with a raft of new players, Guardiola’s team won the league the following year having scored over 100 points which was a record in the Premier League. The following year he won the League Cup, the FA Cup and the Premier League, beating Liverpool by a point in the final match of the season.

He won the Premier League again in 2021, 2022, and last season in 2023, the same year that he won the FA Cup and the Champions League.

The words I want to talk about from this story are:

• Anticipation
• Composure
• Playmaker
• To hand someone the reins
• In history
• To be on track

And

• A raft of something

Anticipation

In regular English, anticipation is a feeling of excitement about something that is going to happen in the future. However in football English, it refers to the ability to anticipate, tpoimagine what will happen and take action to prepare for it. So when a defensive midfielder sees their opponents making a move, if they can position themselves to intercept the ball and stop the move, they have shown anticipation.

Composure

The noun composure normally means the feeling of being calm and in control. It’s very important in football because in the excitement of the game, it’s easy to lose control and to kick the ball too hard or try to play a ball too soon. It’s common to see a player fire a shot high over the crossbar and into the crowd that they’d get on target every time on the training ground. If a player can keep their cool and take their time when the pressure is on, then they have good composure.

Playmaker

A playmaker is an interesting word. In American football, tactics, especially attacking moves are called plays and one of the players on the pitch calls the plays so that the team knows what to do. In football English, a playmaker is a player who directs and organises their teammates when they attack their opponents. A playmaker will have to have a good sense of tactics and be able to read the game so they can make the right passes to start attacking moves that the team have practised.

To hand someone the reins

Reins are the leather straps that go around a horse’s head that you use to control the horse. If you are riding a horse, you need to keep hold of the reins so you can steer and stop the horse. If you hand someone else the reins, you put them in charge or in control. So when a new manager is appointed by a football club, you can say that they have been handed the reins.

In history

The phrase in history means at any time in the past. We use it in a similar way to ever in phrases like the team ended the season with the highest score ever or the team ended the season with the highest score in history. We use in history when the superlative is the biggest or best for all time, not for a personal best. So you might hear someone say Kane scored the most goals in a season ever, meaning at any point in his career, but Haaland scored the most Premier League goals in a season in history.

To be on track

A track is usually a path or a railway line. It’s a route with grooves or rails that keep the vehicles going in the right direction. If you are on track for something, you are following the course that will lead to you doing or achieving wherever you are on track for. So if you are studying very hard at school and you are good at your school subjects, you could say that you are on track to get good exam results. We say that someone is on track to do something or someone is on track for something.

The last phrase today is:

A raft of something

A raft of something means a large number of something or a lot of something. It’s often used in quite formal writing. You might hear that a company has made a raft of new appointments if they have hired lots of new staff or that an organisation has come up with a raft of measures to make them more environmentally friendly.

OK. I have focused on 7 bits of vocabulary today. They are:

• Anticipation
• Composure
• Playmaker
• To hand someone the reins
• In history
• To be on track

And

• A raft of something

Listen to the description of Pep Guardiola one more time to hear these words in context.

Pep Guardiola

Pep Guardiola was born in 1971 in Santpedor which is a small town to the north of Barcelona in Catalonia. Pep is a nickname or a shortened form of Josep. Pep joined Barcelona’s youth academy, La Masia at the age of 13 and played his way through the youth teams, making his debut for Barca at the age of 19.

He stayed at Barcelona until 2001 when he moved to Brescia and then Roma in Italy and later played in Qatar and Mexico. He played as a defensive midfielder and was highly regarded for his anticipation, his composure on the ball, accurate passing, tactical awareness, and ability to read the game. He was described as the brains of Barcelona’s dream team and was on a list of the best deep-lying playmakers of all time.

Guardiola returned to Barcelona in 2007 to manage the Barcelona B team, which played in the third tier of Spanish football. In his first season in charge, he led the team to a place in the playoffs and secured promotion to the second division. This performance impressed the club owners enough to hand him the reins to the first team. In his first year, he won the league, the Copa del Rey and the Champions League, becoming the youngest manager ever to win the Champions League. In his second year, he did even better winning a record six trophies, the Spanish League, the Copa del Rey, the Champions League, the Spanish Super Cup, the European Super Cup and the Club World Cup, becoming the first manager in history to do so.

In 2013, Guardiola moved to Germany to manage Bayern Munich and took the team to the top of the Bundesliga, winning the league with seven games to play. And then in 2017, he moved to Manchester City.

Guardiola started his first season at Manchester City with a series of 10 wins and it looked like he was on track to enjoy the same sort of success that he’d enjoyed in Spain and Germany, but the Premier League proved to be more of a challenge and City finished the season without any silverware.

Having identified the club’s weaknesses and filled the gaps with a raft of new players, Guardiola’s team won the league the following year having scored over 100 points which was a record in the Premier League. The following year he won the League Cup, the FA Cup and the Premier League, beating Liverpool by a point in the final match of the season.

He won the Premier League again in 2021, 2022, and last season in 2023, the same year that he won the FA Cup and the Champions League.

Language Challenge

Right, now it’s time for you to think about the language again. I have spoken about seven useful words and phrases. I have found examples of these words in news stories online and edited them slightly. I have removed today’s vocabulary so I want you to fill in the gaps with the language from the podcast.

Number 1. Egyptian Premier League side Al Ahly have _______________ to Marcel Koller in a bid to improve their fortunes next season.

Number 2. Deep-lying ___________ are often known for their vision, technique and passing.

Number 3. Two women have been kicked out of house for three months after _________ complaints about their antisocial behaviour were made to the council.

Number 4. Plans are back ________ to build a new leisure centre in Halifax after they were put on hold due to rising costs.

Number 5. As a coach, you need to be ahead of that curve; you have to __________ things before they happen.

Number 6. Facebook’s Twitter rival Threads has become the fastest growing app __________, hitting 100 million users in five days

Number 7. England head rugby coach Steve Borthwick praised his players for maintaining their _________ after going behind to Wales in the second half to go on and claim a 20-10 win in Cardiff.

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

Football phrase

Now it’s time for this week's football phrase.

This week’s football phrase is **********. I’m not sure if this was a football phrase, but this is a term that I have spoken about in this podcast quite recently. It means the trophies that a club receives for winning a league or cup competition. When Guardiola first took over the reins at Manchester City, he was disappointed not to win any ********** in his first season.

If you know the answer, be sure to leave it in a comment on the page for this podcast on Premier Skills English.

Before I finish, I am going to go through the answers to last week’s language challenge.

Number 1. A prominent Russian journalist and a lawyer were attacked and suffered serious injuries after several masked men forced their car to stop on Tuesday.

Number 2. Here we take a look at what the Liverpool squad could look like against Chelsea on the opening weekend as Jurgen Klopp looks to add to Alexis Mac Allister and Dominik Szoboszlai.

Number 3. Arsenal youngster Khayon Edwards revealed which senior player has impressed him most in training.

Number 4. Is there a better teacher to learn how to play the false nine position in a Liverpool system than Roberto Firmino?

Number 5. The family of the victim have criticised the role that the media and social media played during the police investigation, and have accused the press of running stories just to sell more papers.

Number 6. Picking up the ball just before the 10th minute, the Liverpool wide-man went on an emphatic run, dribbling past four opposition players along the way.

Number 7. To inaugurate its first Louis Vuitton spring summer 2024 collection, Pharrell Williams organised a show worthy of a Hollywood production.

Number 8. Ocean views, sought-after schools and hardly a property for sale in sight. Some of Sydney’s most tightly held suburbs had only a handful of sales within the past year.

Number 9. Although Disney’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny hit the top spot on domestic box office charts, the producers may be disappointed having collected an underwhelming million in its debut weekend.

And 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.