This Week: End of the road

End of the Road 

Laura: Hello my name’s Laura 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: And I’m Jack and we hope you are all well.

Laura: The Premier League season is over but Premier League teams will still be in action over the next few weeks.

Rich: This week our headlines are all about how English teams European adventures came to an end.

Jack: But, more importantly, our main aim is to focus on some football Englis for you to learn.

Laura: We’ll look at three football headlines from the last seven days and focus on some useful bits of vocabulary from each story. 

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

Jack: And a little later we’ll also have a Premier League prediction for you. 

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

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

Jack: Don’t forget that we also have our weekly Premier Skills English podcast that is released every Friday. Every week we help you with some different vocabulary or an aspect of grammar.

Laura: Our latest podcast is called Learning Vocabulary: Making suggestions.

Rich: You might not know it but Jack, Rowan and myself are the directors at a small English football club.

Laura: They’re not really but they like to imagine they are. It’s like a big imaginary game of football manager if you’ve ever played it.

Jack: It’s fun to imagine and in this week’s podcast we have some decisions to make. We have to decide on next season’s kit, a new sponsor and signing new players.

Rich: In the podcast, we focus on words and phrases we use to make suggestions. You can find the lesson on the homepage on the Premier Skills English website. 

Laura: OK, you’re now going to hear our three headlines. After each headline, we’ll have a little discussion and look at some vocabulary. 

Jack: The words and phrases we are looking at this week are: overturn, in a row, to fall asleep at the back, a string of chances, deserved and greedy..

Rich: Later on we’ll also have a language challenge for you to have a go at so you need to be ready for that.

Headline 1

Rich: No Silva lining for City.

Jack: Manchester City crashed out of the Champions League at the quarter-final stage for the third season in a row when they lost 3-1 to Lyon. City had most of the possession and Kevin De Bruyne found an equaliser in the second half. However, disaster struck with ten minutes to go when VAR failed to overturn a Lyon goal for a foul on a City player and Raheem Sterling missed a golden opportunity to equalise before Lyon got their third seconds later.

Laura: Disappoint for City and their fans all in David Silva’s last game for the club. Do you think Lyon’s second goal should have been allowed?

Rich: I don’t. I think it was a foul and should have been ruled out.

Jack: I’m not so sure. The referee didn’t see a foul and then VAR didn’t rule it out either. I think you’ve got to go with their decision.

Laura: I’m sure City fans aren’t so happy but it is what it is. Let’s look at some of the language we used in the headline. 

Rich: Let’s stick with that goal from Lyon. We said that VAR failed to overturn the decision.

Jack: To overturn something means to officially decide that an original decision was not correct and to change it.

Laura: One job of VAR is to overturn incorrect decisions made by the referee on the pitch.

Rich: We also see the word used about legal matters. Court decisions might be overturned for example.

Jack: Someone might be sent to prison after a guilty verdict and then the person’s prison sentence might be overturned by the court if new evidence is found.

Laura: The second bit of language we’re going to look at from the headline is in a row.

Rich: If something happens in a row it happens consecutively.

Jack: We said that Manchester City have lost three Champions League quarter-finals in a row. They lost a quarter-final in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Laura: Hopefully, they can do better next year and not make it four in a row. Let’s hear our next headline.

Headline 2

Jack: It all goes Jong for United.

Laura: Manchester United went down 2-1 in their Europa League semi-final against cup experts Sevilla. It all looked good for United when Bruno Fernandes put them ahead from the spot in the 9th minute after Marcus Rashford was brought down. But, Sevilla found a first-half equaliser and after United missed a string of chances they fell asleep at the back and allowed Luuk de Jong to score the winner for the Spanish side. 

Rich: Another disappointing result for United. That’s three semi-final defeats in a row.

Jack: Yes, the League Cup, the FA Cup and the Europa League. I thought United were the better team and although it’s difficult to get over a cup defeat I think the future is bright for United.

Laura: I agree, on another night they could have won 3-0. It seems Sevilla have a lot of success in this competition. They’ve won it five times.

Rich: OK, we used a couple of interesting phrases in the headline that I’d like us to look at. The first is a string of chances.

Jack: We said that United missed a string of chances in the Sevilla match.

Laura: In this example, a string of chances means a series of opportunities to score. The chances arrived one after another. They had a number of chances in a row.

Rich: United had three or four opportunities to score at the beginning of the second half. They had a string of chances.

Jack: You might see other examples when we speak about football: A team might have a string of victories or Manchester United won a string of titles in the 1990s.

Laura: Outside of football you might hear about a singer or band that had a string of hits or Disney have had a string of movie hits.

Rich: The other phrase I’d like us to look at is to fall asleep at the back. This phrase is very idiomatic - there was nobody sleeping on the pitch.

Jack: We use this phrase in football to describe a defensive mistake that involves a lack of concentration. The back is the defence.

Laura: United fell asleep at the back which allowed Sevilla to score.

Rich: We use similar phrases in general English. We can use asleep on the job or asleep at the wheel.

Jack: Both of these phrases are used to describe situation where people lack concentration and allow something to happen that shouldn’t.

Laura: Let’s listen to our final headline.

Headline 3

Laura: Premier League winners revealed.

Rich: The Premier League have announced the winners of their season awards. Jurgen Klopp is Manager of the Season, Kevin De Bruyne is Player of the Season, Trent Alexander Arnold is Young Player of the Season and Son Heung Min wins the Goal of the Season Award. All the awards were decided by a supporters vote combined with the choices from a panel of experts.

Jack: Any surprises there?

Laura: I don’t think so. I think they all deserved their awards.

Rich: Kevin De Bruyne? Maybe a Liverpool player?

Jack: Don’t be greedy, Rich something that De Bruyne definitely isn’t. He got 20 assists this season - a Premier League record.

Laura: Let’s look at a bit of vocabulary. I want to look at two words we’ve just mentioned: deserved and greedy.

Rich: OK, let’s start with deserved. If something is deserved it means that it has been earned by doing something well or behaving well. 

Jack: We often hear it in football. It was a deserved victory, a deserved equaliser or a deserved winner.

Laura: Even if Rich doesn’t agree I think most people think Kevin De Bruyne deserves the Player of the Season award.

Rich: Jack told me not to be greedy. Greedy means to always want more. We can be talking about all kinds of things when someone is greedy: food, power and money are three of the things we are often talking about when we talk about greed.

Jack: I said that Kevin De Buyne is not greedy. I said this because he passes a lot. He got 20 assist this season. He is an unselfish player.

Laura: In football we often describe a player as greedy if they always shoot and never pass especially when a teammate is in a better position.

Rich: This is usually negative but sometimes it’s important for strikers to be a little greedy.

Jack: OK. We’ve looked at three stories and six bits of vocabulary in our headlines. The words and phrases we’ve looked at are: overturn, in a row, to fall asleep at the back, a string of chances, deserved and greedy.

Laura: Have a listen to the headlines again and see if you understand the vocabulary we’ve looked at. 

Prediction

Rich: It’s time for our Premier League prediction. This week there are no Premier League teams in action but there is still a couple of competitions happening.

Jack: And we’re going to focus on the big one: the Champions League.

Laura: It’s a bit different without any Premier League teams but it’s also good to be the neutral for a change.

Jack: OK, Rich there are four teams left in the Champions League so with your best neutral hat on who is going to win and who do you want to win the Champions League?

Rich: It’s France against Germany in both semi-finals and it’s the first time in 30 years that there will be no team from either England, Spain or Italy among the last four. Is this the new normal? I don’t think so but after Bayern Munich’s 8-2 demolition of Barcelona, we all know the team to beat. I think along with most people that Bayern will win the Champions League this season but if I could choose a winner out of the last four I would go with Lyon. It would be the biggest shock in the history of the Champions League.

Laura: You always love the underdog to win, don’t you but I’m going for Bayern too.

Jack: Me too. Can you imagine if they score ten in the final?

Rich: So, that’s our prediction. What’s yours? Do you agree? You can make your prediction for all Champions League and Europa League ties on the Premier Skills English website.

Language Challenge

Laura: To finish up the show we’ve got a quick language challenge connected to this week’s vocabulary.

Jack: Earlier we used the phrase to fall asleep at the back and we looked at the phrases to fall asleep on the job and fall asleep at the wheel.

Rich: Here are three sentences which use phrases with sleep. Can you complete each sentence?

Laura: I was so tired after all that sport yesterday I slept like a ______.

Jack: I ____ asleep at my desk last night. I think I’m working too much.

Rich: With all those people in the street I couldn’t get a _____ of sleep last night.

Jack: We want you to write the correct answers on the Premier Skills English website where we have some more questions and activities connected to this week’s show.

Laura: Or write your answer on Apple Podcasts if that’s where you listen to us. Just write the answers in the review section and say hi.

Rich: Before we finish we just wanted to say that we hope you found this lesson useful and we hope that all of you stay fit and healthy.

Jack: Bye for now and enjoy your football.