Season Finale: A Historic Treble!

Introduction  

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

Rich: Hi there. I’m Rich. We’ve got lots of interesting words and phrases to help you talk about football in English.

Jack: We want you to use and practise these phrases by interacting with Premier League fans from around the world in our comments section.

Rich: If you listen to us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, you can leave your comments in the review section. We do read all the reviews and would love to hear from you.

Jack: You can find all our latest content on the Premier Skills English homepage or the Premier Skills-British Council Facebook page. 

Rich: Let’s start with our headlines!

Headlines

Jack: 6-0 rout of Watford completes historic treble for City.

Rich: Manchester City beat Watford 6-0 in the FA Cup Final last weekend to lift the oldest trophy in football for the sixth time. It was the first time a team has scored six in the final for over a hundred years and the result equals the biggest ever win in an FA Cup Final. The win also means City have won all three domestic trophies. The first time any team has ever done this.

Jack: Kompany says goodbye at the top.

Rich: Following City’s FA Cup win, their captain, Vincent Kompany, announced that he was leaving the club after 11 years. Kompany won four Premier League titles, four League Cups and two FA Cups with City. He will be remembered this season for his long-range strike that won City the title, and overall, as one of the Premier League’s best-ever defenders.

Jack: Success on the streets of Manchester.

Rich: Thousands of people celebrated on the streets of Manchester as City celebrated their historic success with an open-top bus parade around the city. The men’s team and women’s team, who have won the FA and League Cup double this season,  were cheered on by huge crowds on a happy day for the blue half of the city.

Jack: What a performance from City, hey? What a season!

Rich: Yes, they’ve got to go down as one of the best teams ever.

Jack: I can’t disagree with that. What a season they’ve had.

Vocabulary alert!

Jack: In our vocabulary alert, we look at some football English that we used in the headlines.

Rich: Our six words and phrases this week are: rout, the double and treble, domestic, historic, to announce something and open-top bus parade.

Jack: Let’s start with the word rout. We said in the headlines ‘6-0 rout of Watford’. In general English, this word is not very common, but you do hear it a lot in match reports and when people are talking about football. A rout is a heavy defeat. City’s rout of Watford began when David Silva got the first and ended when Raheem Sterling got the sixth.

Rich: Rout can be a verb, too. To be routed in the FA Cup Final can’t be a nice experience but the Watford fans were amazing.

Jack: The next words are double and treble. We said that Manchester City’s women’s team had won the double. This is two trophies; in this case the FA Cup and League Cup.

Rich: The men’s team went one better and won the treble. This is three trophies; the Premier League, FA Cup and League Cup. 

Jack: The next word we want to look at is domestic. In the headlines, we said ‘City have won all three domestic trophies’.

Rich: This word has a number of meanings but in this example, it is used to describe something happening in one country. All the trophies were in the UK none of them were foreign or European trophies such as the Champions League.

Jack: The next word is historic. We said that City have won a historic treble.

Rich: Historic describes something that is important in history and will be remembered for a long time. City winning the domestic treble was historic in football because it had never been done before.

Jack: If you watch the BBC, you may hear them say an historic event. This is because in the past, the h wasn’t pronounced so the words started with a vowel sound. This is still true for words like hour and honour. 

Rich: So is BBC just wrong? Well, that’s hard to judge, but it’s a lot more common to use ‘a’ when a word starts with a consonant sound such as ‘huh’ in historic.

Jack: The next phrase is to announce something. Vincent Kompany announced that he was leaving Manchester City after eleven years at the club.

Rich: To announce something means to tell people in an official way. Things such as plans, events and decisions are usually announced.

Jack: The final phrase is open-top bus parade. This is how Manchester City celebrated in Manchester this week. A parade is a public celebration that usually involves walking or slow moving vehicles. Manchester City had a victory parade in the city.

Rich: And an open-top bus is a bus with no roof. In the UK most buses have an upstairs and a downstairs and open-top buses are usually used for tourists.

Jack: I bet the players were happy it didn’t rain.

Rich: Yes, there was only blue sky which I think was appropriate for City.

Football Awards

Jack: Right, every week, we give out three Matchweek awards. 

Rich: The awards are Player of the Week, Team of the Week and Goal of the Week.

Jack: In the comments section, you need to tell us if you agree with our choices.

Rich: This week, we’re going to do things a little differently. We’re going to give out our end of season awards.

Jack: And we want you to choose the winners. We will give you three options and we want you to decide who should win.

Rich: Let’s start with Player of the Season. It was really difficult to get this down to three options but our nominations are:

Jack: Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling.

Rich: Liverpool’s Sadio Mane.

Jack: Liverpool’s Virgil Van Dijk.

Rich: I know. No, Sergio Aguero, no Eden Hazard, and no Mohamed Salah. It was difficult.

Jack: Let’s move on to our three options for Team of the Season.

Rich: The first is Wolverhampton Wanderers. They were promoted last year and have had a fantastic season, finishing seventh and qualifying for Europe.

Jack: The second is Liverpool. They only lost one Premier League match all season and their points total would have won the Premier League in most years. They still have the Champions League Fimnal to look forward to.

Rich: The third, of course, is Manchester City. They have won everything in England and many are describing them as the best team ever. But, they still need to conquer Europe.

Jack: Finally, our nominations for Goal of the Season. This was really difficult.

Rich: The first is Eden Hazard for Chelsea against West Ham in April. It was a brilliant individual goal.

Jack: The second is Andros Townsend for Crystal Palace against Manchester City in December. An absolute screamer that gave City their only home defeat of the season.

Rich: And the third option is Vincent Kompany for Manchester City against Leicester. A long-range strike that won City the title. The only goal that Kompany scored from outside the box in eleven years at the club.

Jack: Choose the player, team and goal you think should win on the Premier Skills English website.

Matchweek Prediction 

Jack: Every week, Rich predicts the result of one Premier League match. The Premier League season is over but we’ve got a few more predictions for you to make yet.

Rich: There are two huge European Finals involving Premier League clubs coming up.

Jack: This week Rich is going to talk about the Europa League Final taking place in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan on Wednesday the 29th of May.

Rich: That’s right. The Europa League Final is a London Derby between Arsenal and Chelsea. It’s a really difficult match to call. Chelsea are probably slight favourites as they finished third and Arsenal fifth in the Premier League table but Arsenal need to win to qualify for next season’s Champions League. It could be Eden Hazard’s last game for Chelsea and he will want to go out on a high. Arsenal score a lot of goals and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang finished as the Premier League’s top scorer this season. As I said, it’s going to be close but I fancy Hazard to get the winner. Final score: Chelsea 2-1 Arsenal.

Jack: I think you’ve got this one all wrong, Rich. It’ll be 3-0 to Arsenal with an Aubameyang hat-trick.

Rich: Whatever you say, Jack. What do you think the result will be? Write your prediction in the comments section at the bottom of the page.

Jack: Right, that’s all we have time for. I hope you have enjoyed this football round-up. Join the discussion at the bottom of the page on the Premier Skills English website. 

Rich: If you listen to us on Apple Podcasts, don’t forget to leave us a review. We’d love to hear from you.

Jack: Bye for now and enjoy your football.