This Week: What's new?

Welcome to This Week from Premier Skills English, a weekly review of football action for learners of English from across the globe. In This Week, Rich and Jack talk about the latest action from the Premier League and have lots of football English for you to learn.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to This Week on Premier Skills English. My name’s Jack and I’m here on my own today because Rich is on holiday. He’s relaxing on a beach somewhere right now enjoying some sunshine and seafood with his family. This means it’s my job today, to talk about some of the stories from the world of football and the Premier League and then to talk about some vocabulary.

I’m publishing this podcast in different places. So you can watch the recording of the podcast on youtube ... and you can listen on Apple podcasts ... and on Spotify as well as all the other podcast platforms. Or you can visit the Premier Skills English website at britishcouncil.org/premierskillsenglish where you’ll be able to download the podcast and also read the transcript ... and complete a language task to help you remember the new words and phrases I talk about from the Premier League stories.

The new season starts on Friday night when Arsenal travel to Brentford. So with four days to go, there isn’t much news to report. I’ve been looking at a series of articles on the Premier League website: premierleague.com about what’s new for 21/22.

What’s new for 21/22?

These articles cover a range of topics. In this podcast, I am going to focus on three. I’m going to talk about new managers, a new stadium and a new handball rule.

There are four new managers starting the new season.

Xisco Munoz starts his first Premier League match on the touchline for Watford after leading the hornets back to the Premier League.

Thomas Frank is the head coach for Brentford. In his first season in charge at Brentford, he led the team to a third place finish in the Championship. That year, the Bees lost in the play-off to their arch-rivals Fulham. Frank managed to finish third again last year and time won the play-off against Swansea, making Brentford the 50th club to compete in the Premier League.

Bruno Lage has taken over at Wolverhampton Wanderers. Lage has come to the Premier League following a successful season with Benfica in his native Portugal.

And the most exciting arrival for me is Patrick Viera. Arsenal’s legendary captain has replaced Roy Hodgson at Crystal Palace. Viera managed New York City for a couple of years and then spent a couple of respectable seasons in the top tier in France with Nice.

Now I want to look at a couple of interesting bits of language.

Listen to this sentence:

The Bees lost in the play-off to their arch-rivals Fulham.

Arch-rivals. Can you think of any other word or phrase that uses arch as a prefix?

You might have heard the term archbishop. In some christian organisations, bishops are senior figures - a bit like regional managers and then an archbishop is like the top bishop, the CEO. The other common collocation with arch is arch enemy. Superman’s arch-enemy is Lex Luthor. Batman’s arch-enemy is the Joker. Normal people don’t have arch enemies. Can you work out what arch means in these uses?

The best definition I have found is quite simple. It means greater than or worse than others of the same type. So Brentford have many rivals. In the Premier League, they have 19 rivals. Historically, their fiercest rivalry has been with Fulham. Fulham are their arch-rivals. Sadly, Fulham were relegated so Brentford will only have Chelsea to play in the West London Derby.

Who are your arch-rivals? Are they opponents in a local derby? Or is your rivalry more personal?

The next phrase I want to look at comes from the following sentence:

Lage has come to the Premier League following a successful season with Benfica in his native Portugal.

His native Portugal. This means that he was born in Portugal. Native is an adjective in this sentence. The word is related to nationality. The construction I am focusing on is used when describing places. You could say she’s moved back to her native Germany or he’s come from his native Indonesia. The construction includes the possessive pronoun and then the word native and then the place.

You can also use native to talk about the animals and plants that live naturally in an area. You can talk about the native plants of Scotland. It’s probably used more frequently in a negative way to say that an animal or plant species is not native to an area. For example, rabbits are not native to Australia.

Now, I want to look at another thing that’s new in 21/22: a new stadium.

Brentford is the 50th club to play in the Premier League and the Brentford Community Stadium will be the 60th ground to host Premier League football. The stadium was only opened a year ago after the club moved from their old Griffin Park home and the Bees settled in quickly as they won promotion for the first time.

The Bees’ home is going to be the smallest out of all the top flight clubs with a capacity of 17,250. It also has the honour of hosting the first match of the new campaign when Arsenal visit on Friday.

There are two bits of vocabulary that I want to look at. The first is the verb to host. This means to provide the space and everything else that is needed for an event. Japan has just hosted the Olympic games. Japan has provided all the venues, accommodation and equipment to have an Olympic games. Brentford’s stadium will be the location of the first match of the new season so you can say Brentford will host the first match.

The word host can also be used as a noun and then it means the person or group of people who are hosting an event. Brentford are hosting the opening match. Brentford are the hosts of the opening match. This is often used when someone has a party or a dinner party. If you throw a party, then you are the host.

The next bit of vocabulary I want to look at is a phrasal verb: to settle in. You settle in when you move to a new place, perhaps a new house, or a new job. When you are really new and don’t know quite how everything works, you need to settle in. When you have been there a little while and everything is more familiar, you could be said to have settled in. I think this phrasal verb is probably used the most to ask people how they are feeling when they move house or job. You can ask, how are you settling in?

Brentford quickly settled in to their new home at the Brentford Community Stadium and they won promotion to the Premier League for the first ever time.

OK, what else is new in 21/22?

The last article from the what’s new section on the Premier League’s website that I want to look at is the Handball law. The International Football Association Board have revised two Laws of the Game. These laws are about how referees should decide what to do about handballs. You’ll be pleased to hear that if a player, not the goalkeeper, uses their hand or arm to control the ball it will still be a foul. However, now there is extra guidance on what makes a handball deliberate. I think that this is always going to be something that a referee will have to use their best judgement on, but now, they should look to see if a player’s arm is in a natural position. If a player’s arm is extended away from their body, there is a greater likelihood that the player will be penalised. The second change to the Laws of the Game means that if an accidental handball, that is, a handball by a player whose arm is not extended, if an accidental handball happens just before another player scores, that goal will now stand. Last season, that sort of goal would have been disallowed. The article finishes by reassuring everyone that a player cannot score with a handball, even if it is accidental.

There are three bits of vocabulary that I want to look at from this story. The first is revised. I used the past participle of the verb to revise. This has two normal meanings. I think the most common use for most of the people listening will be related to taking an exam. Before you take an exam, I expect you revise. This means you look at and make notes on the materials from your course of study to remember all of the details before you do an exam. The noun form is revision. I was terrible at revision because you need to be self-motivated and I was really lazy. The second meaning of revise means to look at something again and make improvements. So if you want to publish a book, you have to take your text, your manuscript to a publisher who will read it and make suggestions about how you can revise it. Usually, an author will have to revise their manuscript several times before a publisher will accept it.

The next word to look at is deliberate. The adjective deliberate is used to say that something was done intentionally - that is, it was something that the person wanted to do. It’s the opposite of by accident. My two sons are always play-fighting and sometimes they hurt each other. I always appeal to them to forgive one another and I say - he didn’t mean to hurt you, it was an accident. And usually, when my boys are angry, they’ll reply, no it wasn’t, it was on purpose. On purpose means the same as deliberate. Not an accident.

The last word I want to look at is penalised. This is the past participle of the verb to penalise which means to put someone at a disadvantage. On the football pitch, the worst way that a team can be penalised, is a penalty. A penalty is the noun form from this verb. It has a specific meaning in football, but technically, any punishment that the referee gives out is a penalty. So if a player is sent off, that’s a tough penalty for the team with 10 men. A lot of the actions that are carried out by the referee are normally spoken or written about using the passive voice. In the article it says that a player will more likely be penalised if a handball is judged to be deliberate. Will be penalised.

Football Phrase

OK, our football phrase. If you’ve not listened to the podcast before, every week we set our listeners a challenge. We explain a football phrase or word and you have to guess what it is. You will hear this football phrase in every podcast we release this week. When you know the answer, go to the podcast page on the Premier Skills English website or the review section on Apple Podcasts and write the word or phrase in the comments. If you’re correct we’ll announce your name on next week’s podcast.

This week’s football phrase is **** ***. This phrase can be a phrasal verb or a noun and it’s what’s happening this weekend - the Premier League season is going to **** ***; it’s going to start. **** *** is at 8 o’ clock on Friday when newly promoted Brentford host Arsenal.

A nice and easy phrase this week!

And that’s all I have time for now but I will be back later this week on Apple Podcasts and Spotify with the Premier Skills English podcast.

Before I finish, I just want to say that I hope you found this lesson useful and I hope all of you stay fit and healthy.

Bye for now and enjoy your football.