This Week: The Manchester 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.

This weekend, we were treated to three derby matches; the Manchester derby, between the two Manchester clubs, the East Midlands derby between Nottingham Forest and Leicester and the North London derby between Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal. Derby matches are alway special because the history and local rivalry means that the teams are highly motivated and that can lead to more exciting matches.

I should point out that there are a few East Midlands derbies as there are three teams that play in the East Midlands, but only Leicester City and Nottingham Forest play in the Premier League so for our purposes this is the East Midlands derby.

These matches were very exciting and so when I started writing about them, I ended up writing more than I should have done. So each story is longer and there are more items of vocabulary for me to talk about. So I’m going to publish this podcast in three parts as a bit of an experiment. I will publish part one today, part two tomorrow and part three on Friday. I don’t think I’m going to do this every week, it’s just how things have worked out this week.

But before we get to today’s story, I want to answer a really interesting question that was asked by Chen Meng Tso from Taiwan. Chen Meng Tso asked about my pronunciation of 0. Chen says that it doesn’t sound like zero.

OK - in football and rugby, we use the word nil, written n-i-l to say no goals. So when I say scores, I’d say Arsenal 2 - Tottenham Hotspur 0, for example. You don’t say Spurs zero, we say nil. Why do we say nil? I don’t know. I have looked it up. Nil means nothing in latin so it’s used in some legal and medical English cases because these are academic disciplines and in the past, educated people loved to use a bit of Latin to try to show that they were clever. But football has always been more of a sport of the people and so I’m not sure why we use the term. In Tennis, we use the word love to say no points. In cricket, if someone is out without scoring any points, they are out for a duck and both of these terms come from eggs. You see, when the player’s name has a zero next to it, the number resembles an egg. The cricket expression to be out for a duck is a short form of an older expression to be out for a duck’s egg. I don’t think we use the full phrase any more and people are just out for a duck. And in tennis, the etymology or origin is similar, only it’s not English. The term love comes from the French words for the egg - l'œuf. At least,that’s what I could find online about the origins, but unfortunately nothing or nil about why we use nil in football. Thanks for the question Cheng Meng Tso.

Football phrase

Now, I want to look at last week’s football phrase. If you didn’t guess the phrase last week, here’s one more chance to guess now.

Last week’s football phrase was ** ******. This phrase is used to describe shots that would score a goal if they weren’t blocked by a goalkeeper or defender. This phrase describes shots that do score as well - it’s just used to differentiate such shots from those that missed the goal whether or not they were saved. You see this phrase on match reports. You see the total number of shots and then the number of shots that were ** ******.

Congratulations to Hayato from Japan, Jaroslaw from Poland, Vienguyenngo from Vietnam, Fabs17 from Italy, Hasan from Turkey, Chen Meng Tso from Taiwan, Daniel_06 from Mexico, Mehmet Sisman from Turkey, Aguiar from Brazil, welcome to the podcast Aguiar and congratulations to Isshin from Japan. You all managed to work out that the phrase I was looking for was on target.

Listen out for this phrase in the stories this week.

It was great to read your responses to the questions in last week’s task. Lots of you mentioned exams as the most difficult thing you have ever done. It’s a long time since I sat an exam. About 15 years ago, I did a teaching diploma and had to be assessed for that and that was tough, but not like school and university exams. My wife still has nightmares about her school exams when she’s feeling stressed about something. I did enjoy Jaroslaw’s answer. It sounds like you have never really been challenged Jaroslaw! How about making that a new year’s resolution? I also have a lot of sympathy for Fabs17. A lot of young people feel pressured into becoming the person their parents want them to be. These expectations might be based on love and an idea about what’s best for their children, but parents can be wrong. I don’t think you lost a year. You will have learnt a lot from the experience of changing your degree and if you hadn’t changed, you could have actually lost many more years pursuing something that wasn’t right for you.

I will post some more questions based on the vocabulary from the three derby stories on each of this week’s podcasts.

The first derby match I’m going to talk about this week is the Manchester Derby which was played on Saturday at Old Trafford. The words from the story that I am going to talk about are: dominant, struggle, positive intent, grim, to overcome, and team spirit.

United triumph in the Manchester Derby

Manchester City have been the dominant team in English football for some years now and they took that title from Manchester United. United were arguably the biggest team in the world for some time but they’ve struggled to achieve the potential of their players under a series of managers for the last few seasons. However, it’s looking a lot like Eric ten Hag has done it. At the beginning of the season, City beat United 6-3. But this time round, United were at home and in promising form.

From kick off, United were playing positive football and in the first half, despite few clear attempts on goal, the Red Devils had the edge.

Shortly after the second half started, Phil Foden was substituted for Jack Grealish and City looked much better and were playing with much more positive intent and when the first goal came, it looked like City were going to take over. Kevin de Bruyne fired in a tight cross and Grealish headed the ball past De Gea.

With 13 minutes to go, United were a goal down and things were looking grim when Bruno Fernandes levelled the score with one of the strangest goals of the season. Casemiro played the ball forward for Rashford. Now, Rashford ran with the ball as if he were about to shoot, but he didn’t actually touch the ball. You see, when the ball was played, Marcus Rashford was offside. But Rashford didn’t touch the ball and Bruno Fernandes came running in from an onside position and scored the goal. The assistant referee raised his flag, but after a VAR review, the goal stood.

Four minutes later, Garnacho made a great run with the ball. His first cross went straight into Manuel Akanji’s face. The ball bounced back to the feet of the Spanish forward who took advantage of the stunned defender to cross the ball low to Marcus Rashford who scored in his 7th match in a row.

To come back from 1 nil down to Manchester City, to overcome a result like that will help Manchester United rebuild their team spirit.

Final score: Manchester United 2 - Manchester City 1

The first word from this story that I want to talk about is dominant. I said that Manchester City have been the dominant team in English football for some years now. The adjective dominant means that someone or some organisation has power over others. Usually, we use the adjective when speaking about the most powerful individual in a group. So in a group of people, one person will be the most dominant. They will be the person who speaks first and can influence the group the most.

The next word is the verb to struggle. If you struggle, you find it really difficult to do something. I think that the clearest example is of a person trying to get free if they are being held by someone or restrained in some way. You also might struggle to understand something at school or university and if you don’t earn enough money, you might struggle to pay your bills. I said that Manchester United had been struggling to achieve the potential of their players. They have a world class squad, but have not been able to play well together and haven’t done as well as they could have.

The next item is positive intent. I took this phrase from the commentary I heard on the match. The commentator said that City were playing with much more positive intent. Your intent is what you are planning to do. This is very similar to the word intention. I think that your intention is a specific plan, a plan or desire to do one particular thing whereas your intent is more general. It’s often used in negative sentences to say that you did not want to do something, you did not intend for something to happen. The commentator described City as playing with positive intent; City wanted to play well, not just to score goals, that would be a specific intention, but with positive intent, to defend well, pass well, to shoot well.

I said that towards the end of the match, things were looking grim. I have spoken about this word before, but I really like it. I think it’s very expressive. It’s an advanced word that means worrying and sad. If someone is grim faced, they look like they are really depressed and worried about something. It can also mean unpleasant and ugly. You can describe a building as grim. Some architecture looks heavy and depressing; that’s grim. When the word grim is used to talk about the future, it means that the outlook, that is the predictions are not positive, the results are not expected to be good.

More positive is the verb to overcome. This means to defeat an enemy or competitor or succeed when faced with a difficult situation. You might have to overcome a disadvantage or an obstacle to succeed. When Manchester United were a goal down against Manchester City, that was quite a challenge to overcome.

The last phrase I want to talk about from this story is team spirit. I said that overcoming that challenge will help Manchester United rebuild their team spirit. This is the feeling that the team has, that the members of the team have about being part of the team. It’s essential that a team feels that they can trust their team members to work together in the interest of the team, rather than for selfish reasons. When a team has a good team spirit, the team will feel the joy of victory together and this helps build trust and confidence in each other. If you work in a team, if you have a good team spirit, it should make your team more effective, or at least, it will make working in a team more satisfying.

OK, that’s six words from this story. The words from the story were: dominant, to struggle, positive intent, grim, to overcome, and team spirit.

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

United triumph in the Manchester Derby

Manchester City have been the dominant team in English football for some years now and they took that title from Manchester United. United were arguably the biggest team in the world for some time but they’ve struggled to achieve the potential of their players under a series of managers for the last few seasons. However, it’s looking a lot like Eric ten Hag has done it. At the beginning of the season, City beat United 6-3. But this time round, United were at home and in promising form.

From kick off, United were playing positive football and in the first half, despite few clear attempts on goal, the Red Devils had the edge.

Shortly after the second half started, Phil Foden was substituted for Jack Grealish and City looked much better and were playing with much more positive intent and when the first goal came, it looked like City were going to take over. Kevin de Bruyne fired in a tight cross and Grealish headed the ball past De Gea.

With 13 minutes to go, United were a goal down and things were looking grim when Bruno Fernandes levelled the score with one of the strangest goals of the season. Casemiro played the ball forward for Rashford. Now, Rashford ran with the ball as if he were about to shoot, but he didn’t actually touch the ball. You see, when the ball was played, Marcus Rashford was offside. But Rashford didn’t touch the ball and Bruno Fernandes came running in from an onside position and scored the goal. The assistant referee raised his flag, but after a VAR review, the goal stood.

Four minutes later, Garnacho made a great run with the ball. His first cross went straight into Manuel Akanji’s face. The ball bounced back to the feet of the Spanish forward who took advantage of the stunned defender to cross the ball low to Marcus Rashford who scored in his 7th match in a row.

To come back from 1 nil down to Manchester City, to overcome a result like that will help Manchester United rebuild their team spirit.

Final score: Manchester United 2 - Manchester City 1

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. The manager praised his squad’s ____________ after they came back from a goal down to win.
Number 2. Arsenal beat Spurs with a __________ performance at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Number 3. The manager is very supportive and makes sure the team approaches every match with ___________.
Number 4. The weather forecast is a bit __________. We may have to cancel the picnic.
Number 5. The team has been playing badly and will ___________ to avoid relegation.
Number 6. Taking swimming lessons helped me ___________ my fear of water.

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

Task

Your task this week is a bit tricky. Today, I want to ask you a difficult question about team spirit. I work from home and have done for years so it’s a long time since I have felt any team spirit. If you work in a team, is there a strong team spirit? If there is, how do you build that team spirit? Is there anything you can do to create a team spirit in a team?

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 the verb form of the noun **********. It means to bring a player off to replace them with another player. If you are ***********, you are brought off and a ********** replaces you.

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

Before I finish, here are the answers to last week’s challenge.

Number 1. Marcus Rashford scored one and assisted another as the Red Devils swept aside the Toffees in the FA Cup third round.

Number 2. The massive rise of e-scooters has made them victims of their own success.

Number 3. The Blues weathered the storm and, midway through the half, Chelsea regained the lead.

Number 4. It took three days and 15 votes, but eventually, the party was able to come to a compromise and to break the deadlock and elect a new speaker of the house of representatives.

Number 5. The horror video game was so scary, it really raised the bar for the whole genre.

Number 6. This is ground control to major Tom, you've really made the grade and the papers want to know whose shirts you wear.

And that’s all I have time for today. Look out for another derby podcast tomorrow! 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.