Summer Tournaments: A Huge Deflection

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: Algeria clinch Africa Cup of Nations.

Rich: Manchester City’s Riyad Mahrez captained Algeria to a 1-0 success against Senegal in the Africa Cup of Nations FInal. It’s the second time Algeria have been champions of Africa. The final was a drab affair and decided in just the third minute when Baghdad Bounedjah’s shot took a huge deflection. Thousands of Algeria fans celebrated on the streets of Algiers and across the country as well as London, Paris and throughout France.

Jack: International Champions Cup gets big teams warmed up.

Rich: Twelve of the biggest teams in World football are playing each other in the international champions cup. Exciting games, brilliant goals and new players; we’ve already seen Arsenal beat Bayern, Man Utd beat Inter Milan and Tottenham beat Juventus. Harry Kane scored an injury-time winner from the halfway line in that last one!

Jack: Wolves beat City to lift the Premier League Asia Trophy.

Rich: Wolves beat Manchester City on penalties to win the Premier League Asia Trophy in China. City missed three penalties in the shootout and Raheem Sterling skied another penalty in normal time. Wolves beat Newcastle 4-0 in one semi and City beat West Ham 4-1 in the other. 

Jack: There are always some strange results in these pre-season tournaments.

Rich: Yeah - Arsenal won away from home!

Jack: Very funny.

Vocabulary alert!

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

Jack: Our six words and phrases this week are: to clinch, a drab affair, a deflection, to warm up, the halfway line and to sky a shot.

Rich: Let’s start with the verb to clinch. TO clinch means to succeed in achieving something or manage to win something.

Jack: It’s quite common in football. You could say ‘Spurs clinched victory in the final minute’ or, like in our headlines, ‘Algeria clinch the Africa Cup of Nations’.

Rich: Our next phrase is quite difficult: ‘a drab affair’. An affair can be used to describe an event. You could say things like I want our anniversary party to be a quiet or family affair.

Jack: In football, a match can be described as the affair - the event.

Rich: The word drab means dull and boring. So if we describe a match as ‘a drab affair’ it means it was a boring match.

Jack: The next word is deflection. In football, a deflection is when a shot hits a defender by accident to make the ball travel in a different direction.

Rich: Deflections often result in lucky goals. The most common collocations are a slight deflection and a huge deflection.

Jack: The ball might take a slight deflection or little deflection off a defender which makes the shot more difficult for the goalkeeper. Or the shot might take a huge deflection and make it impossible for the keeper to save.

Rich: The next phrase is to warm up. Before a match or before any exercise you should warm up. Warming up involves doing light exercises and stretching your muscles.

Jack: It can also be used more generally to mean preparing for something. Premier League teams are warming up for the new season by playing friendly matches or pre-season tournaments.

Rich: The next phrase is quite easy. It’s the halfway line. This is the line that cuts across the pitch at an equal distance from both ends of the pitch.

Jack: Harry Kane scored from the halfway line. Not many players do that in their whole career.

Rich: Our final phrase is to sky a shot. This is a very informal phrase and we don’t see it written down very often. It means to hit a shot way too high - literally up towards the sky.

Jack: You can sky a shot or you can sky a penalty. You might hear a fan say ‘he skied it!’. It’s a bit mean so the fan is usually speaking about a player on the other team!

Rich: OK, so there are our six words and phrases. Listen to this part of the podcast again if you are not sure how to use them.

Jack: The words and phrases are: to clinch, a drab affair, a deflection, to warm up, the halfway line and to sky a shot.

Football Awards

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

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

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

Jack: Let’s start with Team of the Week. This week we’re going to make an unusual decision. We’re going to give the Team of the Week to the same team as last week.

Rich: They’ve won the Africa Cup of Nations for a second time and it was the biggest match last week by a mile so we’re going to give the award to Algeria.

Jack: That was the easy decision, the others are more difficult. The match between Algeria and Senegal was a bit of a drab affair so we’re going to select the other winners from the pre-season tournaments that have been happening around the world.

Rich: Our Player of the Week is Wolverhampton Wanderers goalkeeper Rui Patricio.

Jack: Good choice. The Portuguese keeper pulled off three saves in that penalty shootout win against City and I’m sure he put Raheem Sterling off in normal time when he skyed his penalty!

Rich: And our Goal of the Week goes to Tottenham's Harry Kane. An injury-time winner to give Spurs a 3-2 win against Juventus.

Jack: Anything else?

Rich: Oh yes, and his goal was from the halfway line!

Season Predictions

Jack: This is where Rich usually gives a Premier League prediction. We’re less than three weeks away from the start of the season so instead of that Rich is going to predict the final Premier League table.

Rich: I’m not going to do the whole table.

Jack: No, this week you’re going to predict the bottom five and the three teams that you think will be relegated.

Rich: That’s right.

Jack: Ok, so which five teams do you think will be in the relegation battle?

Rich: OK, so there are maybe ten clubs that could go down but I’m going to look at five. Those teams are two that have just been promoted - Norwich City and Sheffield United and three that might be down near the bottom - Burnley, Newcastle and Brighton.

Jack: OK, so out of those fives which three will you predict to go down and why?

Rich: OK, I’m going to go for Norwich City - I don’t think their defence is strong enough and they haven’t really bought anybody in the transfer window.

Jack: OK, two more …

Rich: And the other two will be Newcastle and Brighton. Both these teams have new managers which will make it difficult; especially if they have a bad start to the season. Brighton finished last season really badly and Newcastle have lost a couple of strikers and haven't replaced them yet.  So my three to go down are: Norwich City, Newcastle and Brighton. Sorry!

Jack: OK, that’s relegation out of the way. Next week we want to hear who you think will get into the   League places this season!

Rich: We want to hear your predictions too so let us know in the comments section on the Premier Skills English website.

Jack: Right, that’s all we have time for this week. If you listen to us on Apple Podcasts, don’t forget to leave us a review. We’d love to hear from you.

Rich: Bye for now and enjoy your football.