Podcast 30

Jack: Hello my name’s Jack and welcome to this week’s Premier Skills English podcast.

Rich: Hi everyone. I’m Rich and every week we talk about football and help you with your English.

Jack: This week, we’re going to talk about last-minute goals, the language focus is about vocabulary connected to doing things quickly, Rich has another Premier League prediction and we have our latest ‘What’s my Team?’ competition with a chance for you to win a Samsung Galaxy tablet.

Rich: What was the answer to last week’s competition question Jack?

Jack: Ah, yes. Last week it was Michael and I think it was quite tricky, his favourite Premier League team is Tottenham Hotspur, Tottenham or Spurs for short. Michael spoke about ‘the game being about glory’. Aragorn1986 from Montenegro correctly pointed out that this is written on part of the stadium at White Hart Lane - Tottenham’s stadium.

Rich: It is actually part of a famous quote from Danny Blanchflower who was Tottenham’s captain in the 1950s and 1960s and maybe their best ever player.

Jack: If you chose Aston Villa , and a few of you did, you were nearly right because he also played for them, but Michael also mentioned North London, which is where Tottenham are based.

Rich: Right, anyway, who is this week’s winner?

Jack: We have selected a winner at random from the correct answers and the twelfth winner of the What’s my team? competition is MichelTerzikhan a Chelsea fan from Armenia. Another Armenian. Congratulations MichelTerzikhan, we’ll be in contact with you this week.

Rich: Well done MichelTerzikhan! Later on in the podcast, you can listen to this week’s What’s my team riddle.

Rich: Before we start, we have to mention Bournemouth’s brilliant 2-1 win against Manchester Utd last week because it gives us the perfect chance to use some of the vocabulary we introduced in last week’s podcast.

Jack: Which phrase could we use about Bournemouth’s win? We could go for shock result or surprise result or an upset.

Rich: Yes, it was definitely a big upset but I wouldn’t say it was out of the blue because Bournemouth beat Chelsea the week before!

Jack: Bournemouth have had a great week!

Rich: We asked you last week what were some of the biggest football upsets or shock results you can remember and quite a lot of you wrote in with some interesting comments.

Jack: Elghoul from Algeria mentioned the USA beating England at the World Cup in 1950 and Abdallah in Kuwait, Aragorn1986 in Montenegro and Anammwariko in Tanzania mentioned Germany’s 7-1 win against Brazil in the last World Cup.

Rich: Tokomoney in Georgia also talked about international football. He remembers Senegal upsetting France in the 2002 World Cup when France were the World Champions.

Jack: Grigor 25 from Armenia spoke about his national team, who beat Denmark and Slovakia 4-0 away from home in two surprise results.

Rich: Nikosonris from Ukraine went back in time when he told us about Sunderland, who were then in the second division, beating Leeds United who were then one of the biggest teams in England, in the FA Cup Final. Many people think this was the biggest ever FA Cup upset.

Jack: Heaton555 from Armenia and Okhilleus7 from Montenegro moved us back to the Premier League and said a shock result was Leicester beating Manchester Utd 5-3 last season but Ruslanjon in Uzbekistan remembers a famous Manchester Utd victory, when they beat Arsenal 8-2 in 2  011/12 - thanks for reminding me Ruslanjon!

Rich: We also asked you about football chants and songs last week .

Jack: You’ll be happy to know that we’re not going to sing to you but thanks for the great response.

Rich: Many of you said ‘You’ll never Walk Alone’ at Liverpool was your favourite song and of course I would agree. But my favourite comments this week were from Okhilleus7 from Montenegro and SalvaGH from Spain because even though they are not Liverpool fans they both enjoy the song.

Jack: Yes, Okhilleus7 said it was the most emotional song and SalvaGH says it gives him goose bumps when he hears it.

Rich: Goose bumps that is a perfect description and a great word. Goose bumps are little spots you get on your arms and skin when you feel scared or excited.

Jack: And befor e important matches with an amazing atmosphere I imagine there are players as well as thousands of fans with goose bumps.

Rich: Before we finish this section I would just like to apologise to Rema from Serbia. Last week I said that he said the Norwich City song ‘On the ball City’ was written in 1860. He actually correctly said that the song was written in 1890 - I’ll pay closer attention to your comments in the future Rema.

Jack: and thanks to all of you who spot any mistakes on the website - it’s really helpful and we try to change them as soon as we can.

Rich: We’ve spoken about Bournemouth’s great win at the weekend. What else has been happening in the Premier League?

Jack: It was another exciting weekend in the Premier League. Leicester City started the weekend top of the table but on Saturday Manchester City claimed top spot with a 2-1 win against Swansea City. But, less than 24 hours later Arsenal climbed into first place with a 2-0 win away at bottom club - Aston Villa. And then, on Monday, Leicester returned to the summit with a fantastic 2-1 win against Chelsea.

Rich: Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez both scored again. They must be the two best players in the Premier League this season.

Jack: Mesut Ozil at Arsenal is also having a great season but I think I agree with you, Rich. It’s a great battle at the top of the table this season and we can use many different words to describe the team at the top or the team moving to the top.

Rich: We can say top of the table, at the top, in top spot, in first place, return to the summit. You said Leicester returned to the summit. The summit is the highest point of something and is usually used to describe the top of a mountain. In football the collocation ‘return to the summit’ is quite common, in fact, the Premier League is often talked about like a mountain.

Jack: Yes, I like how a team can climb the table and reach the summit. Bournemouth are climbing the table after two wins against Chelsea and Manchester Utd. But Aston Villa have fallen down the table over recent years and are now at the very bottom.

Rich: Yes, they’re in real danger of being relegated for the first time since the Premier League began. There were some very exciting games at the weekend. What about Manchester City? I think they were a bit lucky against Swansea. Even Joe Hart, the Manchester City goalkeeper said they played really badly.

Jack: Swansea City equalised to make it 1-1 in the last minute but two minutes later Manchester City got the winner in the 92nd minute.

Rich: Yes they left it very late. It reminded me of the famous match against QPR when City scored in the 92nd and 95th minutes to win the Premier League for the first time.

Jack: Yes that was sensational. But City were not the only team to get a last-minute goal at the weekend. Newcastle scored in the 93rd minute to win at Tottenham and Liverpool got a 96th minute equaliser to draw 2-2 against West Brom. Why do you think last-minute goals are so common in matches?

Rich: I think what happens is that teams start to play more quickly. If a team is losing they start to hurry because they need to score. They attack more and defend less. Maybe players are tired too, and make more mistakes and we’ve also got to remember that the 90th minute isn’t really a minute because it includes injury time.

Jack: The Manchester City - Swansea match is a good example. City were winning 1-0 and Swansea scored in the last minute.

Rich: And then, it was City’s turn to hurry. They rushed forward and scored nearly immediately to make it 2-1. Swansea didn’t have enough defenders on the pitch, which allowed Yaya Toure to score the winning goal.

Jack: I like this word hurry. When we don’t have much time to do things we hurry. Manchester City had to hurry because they needed to score before the referee blew the final whistle. We often hear the phrase ‘hurry up!’ as well.

Rich: When a team that is winning makes a late substitution the player usually walks off the pitch very slowly. The referee usually tells the player to ‘hurry up’.

Jack: You also said ‘City rushed forward’. To rush also means to do something quickly. For example I often wake up late in the morning and have to rush about - having breakfast, a shower and getting dressed quickly to make sure I get to work on time.

Rich: If I drive to work at nine in the morning I often have problems because it’s rush hour, which is when there are lots of cars on the road and lots of traffic jams. This can be very annoying when I am late and in a hurry to get to work.

Jack: We’d like to see all of you using some of these words and expressions in our comments section. Can you try to answer some of these questions?

Rich: Number 1.What last-minute goals can you remember? Number 2: When do you have to do things in a hurry? Number 3: Do you think people rush about too much these days?

Jack: Right, I think it’s time for this week’s competition: ‘What’s my Team?’

Rich: Here is what you have to do. Listen to a Premier League fan, who will talk about their favourite team and then write the name of the team  in the comments section on the Premier Skills English website.

Jack: And for each of the 20 podcast competitions the lucky winner will receive a fantastic Samsung Galaxy Tablet. We wish you the best of luck!

Rich: Right, so this week, our Premier League fan is Pete. Listen to Pete’s riddle and try to work out what’s h is team?

Pete: We are the oldest team in the Premier League. We were founded in 1863 and are the second oldest professional team in the world and we’re really proud of our history. We’ve got a manager who used to play for Barcelona and he’s brought in a few ex-Barcelona players too which is great to see at the Britannia Stadium. The area is famous for ceramics so our nickname is The Potters!

Rich: They had  a great win against Man City a couple of weeks ago.

Jack: Sshh! Don’t let the cat out of the bag! I wonder if any of our listeners have heard that expression before? Time for your prediction, Rich.

Jack: You predicted 2-1 last week, well done!

Rich: But I predicted a 2-1 win for Chelsea not for Leicester. We had lots of predictions last week and well done if you got it right!

Jack: Amaral from Albania, Elghoul and Messaouda from Algeria, Abdallah from Kuwait, Safwan20000 and Rasha Nahas from Saudi Arabia, AleksandarR and Okhilleus7 from Montenegro,  Grigor25 and Heaton555 from Armenia, and Ruslanjon from Uzbekistan all predicted a win for the Foxes so well done to you!

Rich: The big Premier League match this weekend is Arsenal against Manchester City. Arsenal and City are in second and third place and both teams are looking to replace Leicester at the Premier League’s summit. City had a fortunate win against Swansea last weekend but Arsenal are in good form and Mesut Ozil is having a great season. I’m going to go for an Arsenal win in a close match. FInal score: Arsenal 1-0 Manchester City

Jack: You’ve predicted my team to win. Oh no!

Rich: That’s it for today - we’ve run out of time! Thanks for listening. And don’t forget to write your answers to the competition, your answers to our questions using ‘hurry’ and ‘rush’, your predictions and any questions you have about the website or football English in the comments below.

Jack: Don’t forget if you sign in, you can score points to see if you can get your club, your country and your name to the top of our leaderboard.

Rich: Bye for now and enjoy your football.