This Week: A proper fairy tale

Hello my name is Jack and welcome to This Week, the weekly round-up of Premier League action on Premier Skills English where the focus is English vocabulary from the stories.

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.

On the Premier Skills English website, you can read the transcript and join the Premier Skills English community by completing a language task in the comments section. This will really help you remember new words and phrases from the stories from the Premier League.

Before we get to the stories, it’s time to announce the answer to last week’s football phrase. In case you missed it, listen to the football phrase one more time and see if you can guess the answer.

Football phrase

Congratulations to Joaofreitas72 from Brazil, HSN from Turkey,RamonRiuoz and Mario29 from Mexico, Taha Gashout from Libya, 258963 from Vietnam and Omar ElNasser from Egypt. You all correctly guessed that the answer to last week’s football phrase was Break the bank.

Keep listening to the end of the podcast as there will be a new football phrase for you to guess.

The words and phrases I’m looking at this week are: international duty, decisive, dislocating his ankle, fairy tale, have a go and upset.

Listen out for these phrases in the headlines and stories.

Mane’s penalty wins the Africa Cup of Nations

Liverpool’s Sadio Mané was on international duty at the weekend and led his country to victory when he scored the decisive penalty as Senegal beat Egypt to win the Africa Cup of Nations.

When normal time ended without a goal, Egypt were favourites to lift the trophy as they had won their last six shootouts and Mane had already missed a penalty in normal time.

Mané took a long run-up and powered the ball into the bottom left corner out of reach of the Egyptian keeper and Senegal had their first Cup of Nations triumph.

The two phrases I want to talk about from this headline are international duty and decisive.

Duty means something you have to do. Usually, this is because of your job. All the things you have to do at work are your duties. You can also have moral duties which are things you have to do because it’s the right thing to do. So you could say it is our duty to reduce the damage we are doing to the environment. Or a parent has a duty to look after their children.

International duty relates to both professional and moral duty. If a player is selected and agrees to represent their country in their national team, then they have a duty to play because of their agreement, but also because it’s their country so many may feel a moral patriotic duty to play for their country.

Decisive is an adjective that is related to the word decision. If you have two options, perhaps you are deciding what to eat: pasta or pizza, you have something you have to decide. When you decide, you make your decision, the issue is settled. You cut out or rule out the alternative option. If you decide to eat pasta, you cut out the option to eat pizza. Something is decisive when it settles an issue. In the case of the match, the issue was which team would win. The decisive penalty was the penalty that decided the match, that cut out the alternative. In this case, I could have said the winning penalty, but decisive can be used more widely.

Last week, I described a different use of the adjective that can be used to describe a person who makes decisions quickly and effectively.

Let’s move on to the next story.

Klopp calls Elliott’s comeback goal a proper fairy tale

Liverpool’s 18-year-old midfielder Harvey Elliott was stretchered off the pitch back in September after dislocating his ankle in a match against Leeds United. He underwent surgery and a gruelling recovery. Elliott returned to the Liverpool squad on Sunday and came on as a substitute. 18 minutes into his return, he brilliantly controlled a cross before turning and firing it past Cardiff’s keeper. After the match, the Liverpool manager said: “Coming on is a great step back, scoring the goal makes it a proper fairy tale.”

The two items I want to look at from this story are: dislocating his ankle and fairy tale.

The most common use of the verb dislocate is used to describe an injury where a joint in your body, usually a finger or your shoulder is damaged, and the ball of the joint is removed from the socket. This is not the same as a break as dislocated joints can sometimes be popped back into place. You sometimes see this in action films and the hero finds a way to pop their arm back into the socket. I’m not sure if that’s really possible. When Harvey Elliott dislocated his ankle, that’s the joint that connects your foot to your leg, it was a very serious injury that needed surgery and a lot of recovery time.

A fairy tale is a children’s story about magic and dragons or elves or wizards or giants. These are traditional stories that have been told by parents to children for generations. Fairy tales are usually very dramatic but they always end very well with the line and they lived happily ever after. If you describe something as a fairy tale, you mean it worked out really well in the end, a dramatic story with a very happy ending. Elliott’s recovery was very positive. Elliott is only 18 and has already achieved a lot, he shows so much promise that his injury felt cruel. His injury could have really destroyed his dreams, but he worked really hard with his trainers to get fit and strong again so when he was able to return to the squad this weekend, it must have meant the world to him. And then to have scored was so special, it was a fairy tale moment. His father was watching from the stands and had tears in his eyes when he saw his son score and everything that meant to him.

Time to move on to the final story.

Boreham Wood deliver some FA Cup magic

The FA Cup competition brings together teams from all levels of English football. This gives small non-league teams the chance to have a go at the big teams. This doesn’t happen very often, but occasionally, even the giants of the Premier League are invited to play at small town grounds. There hadn’t been many upsets this year, until Boreham Wood who play in the fifth level of English football beat Bournemouth who play in the Championship. They now face Everton at Goodison Park.

The two items I want to look at from this story are have a go and upsets.

Have a go is a useful expression. A go is a turn. When my kids ask to play a computer game, when I am turning on my computer, they ask to go first, to be the first to play. The verb go becomes a noun when the turn is over. The waiting child will say. Your go is finished. It’s my go. So a go is a turn to do something, especially in a game. To have a go is related, but it means to try to do something. The question: do you want to have a go? Means do you want to try? So if I am trying to do something difficult like opening a really tough jam jar, you know, with the lid on really tight, my wife might ask: Do you want me to have a go? In a sporting context, to have a go means to try to beat an opponent. So the FA Cup is an opportunity for smaller clubs to try to beat more successful opponents from higher leagues.

If a club manages to beat a team from a higher league, especially if the difference is great, the result can be described as an upset. I like the football English meaning of upset, because I think it combines two regular English meanings.

The most common meaning of upset is to make someone sad or worried about something. It is to make someone feel upset which means troubled and unhappy. Listen to these examples:

The story upset me.

I upset myself when I remember the story.

I get upset when I think about the story.

The other meaning is not about feelings. It means to move something out of it’s position or however it is settled. So you can talk about plans being upset meaning the plan has to be changed or you can talk about a table being upset meaning the table is turned over and the things that were on the table are all over the floor. To upset means to mess up things that were set or settled.

The football English meaning combines both these meanings. On the one hand, when a lower-level club defeats a club from a higher level, this upsets the order of things. The normal order would have better clubs beat lower-level clubs. This can happen within a league. If a newly promoted team beats the champions, then that is not what people might expect so it might be described as a bit of an upset. But if the champions are beaten by a club that is leagues below them, then that’s really not what people would expect. And because it’s football, there’s a lot of emotion connected to the results so the other meaning of upset is also appropriate. When Bournemouth were knocked out of the FA Cup by Boreham Wood, you know that the team, the manager and the fans were really upset. Plucky little non-league Boreham Wood only had 18 minutes possession in the whole match but they used them well and won. That really was an upset.

OK, so the vocabulary I looked at today was: international duty, decisive, dislocating his ankle, fairy tale, have a go and upset.

Listen to the headlines again to hear this language in context.

REPLAY - Listen to the headlines again

Mane’s penalty wins the Africa Cup of Nations

Liverpool’s Sadio Mané was on international duty at the weekend and led his country to victory when he scored the decisive penalty as Senegal beat Egypt to win the Africa Cup of Nations.

When normal time ended without a goal, Egypt were favourites to lift the trophy as they had won their last six shootouts and Mane had already missed a penalty in normal time.

Mané took a long run-up and powered the ball into the bottom left corner out of reach of the Egyptian keeper and Senegal had their first Cup of Nations triumph.

Klopp calls Elliott’s comeback goal a proper fairy tale

Liverpool’s 18-year-old midfielder Harvey Elliott was stretchered off the pitch back in September after dislocating his ankle in a match against Leeds United. He underwent surgery and a gruelling recovery. Elliott returned to the Liverpool squad on Sunday and came on as a substitute. 18 minutes into his return, he brilliantly controlled a cross before turning and firing it past Cardiff’s keeper. After the match, the Liverpool manager said: “Coming on is a great step back, scoring the goal makes it a proper fairy tale.”

Boreham Wood deliver some FA Cup magic

The FA Cup competition brings together teams from all levels of English football. This gives small non-league teams the chance to have a go at the big teams. This doesn’t happen very often, but occasionally, even the giants of the Premier League are invited to play at small town grounds. There hadn’t been many upsets this year, until Boreham Wood who play in the fifth level of English football beat Bournemouth who play in the Championship. They now face Everton at Goodison Park.

Right, now I’m going to give you a chance to think about the language again.

I’m going to give you six sentences with gaps in them and you have to complete the gaps with the words and phrases I’ve spoken about in this podcast.

Number 1. He fell down the stairs and _______ his shoulder.

Number 2: When Liverpool lost, it was quite an _______.

Number 3: If you witness a crime, it is you _____ to report it to the police.

Number 4: Sadly, there was no _______ ending to the story.

Number 5: The police thought they had caught the criminal, but the DNA evidence was _______.

Number 6: This game is really difficult. Do you want to _______?

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

Football Phrase

OK - our football phrase. So regular listeners will know that every week, we challenge you to work out a mystery football word or phrase.

The football phrase this week is *** *** ******. This phrase means the highest level in a job or in sport. I think it’s most commonly used to talk about the Premier League which is *** *** ****** of English football. You can also use two of the words from the phrase as a compound adjective to mean the best or best quality of something.

If you know the answer to the football phrase, leave a comment on the podcast page for this podcast on the Premier Skills English website. If you have a football phrase that you would like us to use in the podcast, just get in touch and let us know.

Before I finish I just wanted to say that I hope you found this podcast and the vocabulary useful and I hope all of you stay fit and healthy.

Bye for now and enjoy your football.