This Week: The North London Derby

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 britishcouncil.org/premierskillsenglish where you’ll be able to download the podcast.

Today, I’m going to talk about another derby match, the North London derby. Normally, in this week, I talk about three stories, but I got too excited and wrote too much so I’m publishing this week’s podcast in three parts. Yesterday, I spoke about the East Midlands derby and the day before I spoke about the Manchester derby.

The words from the story that I am going to talk about today are: contested, to regain, to slam and route one.

Arsenal overcome Spurs in the North London Derby

The North London derby is one of the most passionately contested fixtures of the Premier League calendar. This is a league fixture without an away win in 9 years.

From the kick off, both teams looked hungry. However Arsenal soon had the upper hand when 14 mins in, Thomas Partey stumbled and almost slipped up right in front of Kane. Having quickly regained his footing, he picked out Saka and played a beautiful through ball. Saka ran wide, holding for a moment before driving the ball across the mouth of the goal. Hugo Loris got to the ball first, but as he went to grab the ball, mistimed it and slapped it over his own shoulder and into the net.

Spurs pushed back and almost scored when a clever bit of play left Son Heung-min one-on-one with Ramsdale. The Arsenal keeper managed to block Son’s shot, but Spurs were not going to make things easy.

The Gunners almost scored again with an amazing effort from distance from Thomas Partey. The ball would have beaten the keeper if it had been centimetres to the left. It slammed into the goal post rattling the woodwork.

As Spurs frustration grew, their attacks became more direct. Loris tried a route one long pass but couldn’t find a white shirt. The ball was fired right back to Saka who crossed the ball to his captain, Odegaard who found the bottom right corner from beyond the penalty area.

In the second half, Tottenham had some great chances and made a series of on target shots, but Ramsdale made a series of excellent saves and Arsenal went 8 points clear at the top of the table.

Final score: Tottenham Hotspur 0 - Arsenal 2

The first word I want to talk about is contested. This is an adjective formed from the verb to contest which means to compete for something. However, I don’t think it’s very common to hear the verb form except in passive forms. So I could have said that derby matches are keenly contested by teams in local rivalries up and down the country. We do use the verb in legal English to say that someone is challenging a judge’s decision and also to say that a person is trying to win in an election, but it’s not common in football English. However the adjective form, contested, describes specific fixtures and some fixtures are contested with more passion and determination, or at least with more feeling from the fans than others.

After Thomas Partey stumbled, I said he regained his footing. To regain means to get something that you had before and lost. If you lose your footing, you misstep and partly lose your balance and control. If you are climbing a mountain and lose your footing, it can be very serious. Partey managed to regain his footing, he managed to nimbly adjust his feet and get back under control.

Partey almost scored with a powerful strike that slammed into the woodwork. The word slam means to hit a surface or cause to hit a surface with enough force to make a loud noise. The most common collocation is to slam the door. If you close a door with such force that it makes a lot of noise, then you slam the door. It doesn’t always have to make a lot of noise; you can slam on the brakes when you are driving, This just means to press down hard, quickly on the brakes. When Partey’s shot hit the upright, the sound rang out through the stadium and the goal posts wobbled from the force of the shot.

The last phrase I want to talk about today is some real football English. It’s informal, but comes up quite frequently in commentary. It is route one. This describes a long kick up the pitch, straight to the forwards. It’s a bit of a risky move and can make a team look desperate. When Spurs were looking frustrated, Loris tried a route one attack and sent the ball flying up the pitch to try to find an attacker, but it went wrong and the ball was collected by an Arsenal defender who fired it right back.

OK, that’s four words from this story. The words from the story were: contested, to regain, to slam and route one.

Listen to the story one more time to hear these words in context.

Arsenal overcome Spurs in the North London Derby

The North London derby is one of the most passionately contested fixtures of the Premier League calendar. This is a league fixture without an away win in 9 years.

From the kick off, both teams looked hungry. However Arsenal soon had the upper hand when 14 mins in, Thomas Partey stumbled and almost slipped up right in front of Kane. Having quickly regained his footing, he picked out Saka and played a beautiful through ball. Saka ran wide, holding for a moment before driving the ball across the mouth of the goal. Hugo Loris got to the ball first, but as he went to grab the ball, mistimed it and slapped it over his own shoulder and into the net.

Spurs pushed back and almost scored when a clever bit of play left Son Heung-min one-on-one with Ramsdale. The Arsenal keeper managed to block Son’s shot, but Spurs were not going to make things easy.

The Gunners almost scored again with an amazing effort from distance from Thomas Partey. The ball would have beaten the keeper if it had been centimetres to the left. It slammed into the goal post rattling the woodwork.

As Spurs frustration grew, their attacks became more direct. Loris tried a route one long pass but couldn’t find a white shirt. The ball was fired right back to Saka who crossed the ball to his captain, Odegaard who found the bottom right corner from beyond the penalty area.

In the second half, Tottenham had some great chances and made a series of on target shots, but Ramsdale made a series of excellent saves and Arsenal went 8 points clear at the top of the table.

Final score: Tottenham Hotspur 0 - Arsenal 2

Language Challenge

Right, now it’s time for you to think about the language again.

Your challenge this week is to complete the gaps in the following sentences with the correct form of the words from the podcast.

Number 1. He is such a bad driver, he __________ the car into a wall last week.

Number 2. In the second half they gave up their strategy and resorted to __________ attacks.

Number 3. After a bad year, the team has __________ their top form.

Number 4. All the candidates were exhausted after a fiercely __________ local election.

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

Task

Your task today is to think about the word regain. Have you ever regained anything that you lost? Are you happy to have it back or were you better off without it?

Share your ideas in the comments section on the Premier Skills English website.

Football phrase

Now it’s time for today’s football phrase. I will let you know the answers to all three of this week’s football phrases next week.

Today’s football phrase is ******. This is a type of kick which is when a player kicks a ball that is passed to them before the ball hits the ground. If a player tries to shoot with a ******, the shot is often very powerful, but can be harder to control.

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

And that’s all I have time for this week. I hope you have enjoyed this week’s derby podcasts. 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.