This Week: The world's oldest rivalry

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

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 the new words and phrases from the stories from the Premier League.

In today’s podcast, I am going to talk about the world’s oldest football rivalry and about what happened when the two old rivals met for a friendly on Tuesday evening.

The words and phrases I am going to talk about are:

• rivalry
• contested
• underdog
• an unofficial anthem
• bold opposition
• galvanised into action

Listen out for this vocabulary in the story.

After the story there will be a short language focus and then there will be a language challenge for you to complete and then at the end of the podcast there will be a new football phrase.

But before that, I want to look at last week’s football phrase. If you didn’t hear it last week, here’s one more chance to guess now.

Last week’s football phrase was a ********* ******** ****. OK ... this was quite difficult to explain. I will read the description I gave before, but it wasn’t very good and I had to give people extra clues in the comments. The phrase I was looking for is used to describe when a player kicks the ball to another player ... that word should have been easy, but the important football-english description ********* ******** means that the player kicked the ball with exactly the right amount of power. It’s really impressive when a player spots a teammate on a run and kicks the ball so that it rolls right at the spot the running teammate needs, often splitting the defenders.

Congratulations to Isshin from Japan, Taher Koshen from Somalia, AndreTorre102 from Brazil, Alex from Ukraine, Hasan from Turkey, El Chueco from Argentina, Satt from Japan, Mobeckham from Turkey and Badger from Poland.

You all managed to work out some or all of the phrase I was looking for, which was a perfectly weighted pass.

Keep listening till the end of the podcast for a new football phrase.

Now it’s time for the story.

The world’s oldest football rivalry

150 years ago, well 150 years, nine months and 14 days ago, the first international football match was played at Hamilton Crescent, Glasgow, in Scotland. This fixture led to one of the most passionately contested and supported rivalries in the world of football The first international football match was played between Scotland and England.

The rivalry is particularly spicy because it goes beyond football. Scotland and England are for the most part good neighbours, but there are reasons why Scotland feels badly treated by England or by the government in London and when the two teams get together to play football, the desire to defeat the English team is very strong. However, the population of England is over ten times that of Scotland so the pool of footballers from which the Scottish manager can select a team is much smaller so in these meetings, Scotland is always the underdog.

On Tuesday evening, the English team travelled to Scotland’s National Stadium, Hampden Park in Glasgow to face their oldest rivals for the 116th time. Of their previous encounters, England had won 48, Scotland 26.

As the teams lined up, a lone bagpiper played the first few notes of Scotland’s unofficial anthem. The crowd started up and belted out the rest of the song with such passion that one of the young mascots covered his ears.

The English team was loaded with stars of the Premier League and Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham. With such a talented squad, it was no surprise to see England go ahead in the first half with goals from Phil Foden and Bellingham.

Scotland managed to put up a characteristically bold opposition, but failed to find a way past the England defence. Scotland’s only goal was an own goal from Harry Maguire who tried to clear a ball and accidentally pushed it into the net.

Scotland suddenly looked like they might make a comeback and this galvanised England into action and Bellingham chopped through the Scottish defence to feed Kane who scored a superb goal.

Final score: Scotland 1 - England 3

Now, I have lived in Scotland for the last year and would have gladly cheered along with the Tartan Army against any other team and my sons both had to go to school the next morning to face their classmates as the only English boys in their classes so I am delighted that England won and also that the match was a friendly.

The phrases I want to talk about from the story are:

• rivalry
• contested
• underdog
• an unofficial anthem
• bold opposition
• galvanised into action

Rivalry

A rivalry is a situation where people or businesses or sports teams are in competition for the same thing. This is very common in football English and I’ve spoken about it before. If you are competing for something, perhaps in a sporting competition or at work, if there’s a promotion that you want and you know that lots of other people want, the other people that you are competing against are your rivals. In football, you have your team, who you support and then all others are your rivals. We use the noun from rivalry when the strength of feeling towards a specific opponent is greater than the others. So the strongest rivalries in the Premier League are between teams that play a derby match. When Arsenal and Spurs meet, the competition is greater than for most other teams because there is a stronger rivalry.

Contested

The noun, a contest, is a competition. You might compete in a fancy dress contest to see who has the best costume, or a dancing contest to see who is the best dancer. In sports, it is less common to talk about the competitions as contests, but they are. Even the Premier League is a contest. The verb form to contest, means to compete for something. It is not commonly used in active statements, but it’s quite common in the passive form. I described the matches between Scotland and England as passionately contested. OK, in this instance the reduced form means the verb is being used as an adjective. You might also hear that a medal is being contested by lots of athletes or that a tournament will be fiercely contested.

If you search for the verb, you will find lots of examples of uses in relation to political contests. So elections are contested by the different candidates that people can vote for.

Underdog

The underdog, usually there’s only one, is the competitor in any competition that people think is least likely to win. So in most matches, there is the favourite and the underdog. If Manchester City are playing ... well, pretty much anyone, they are the favourites and their opposition are the underdogs. This is especially true if they are playing someone like Burnley or Luton whose teams are not worth anywhere near as much and who don’t have years of victories and trophies filling their trophy rooms.

Unofficial anthem

The word anthem refers to a song that is special for a group of people or for an event. Most commonly, you hear the phrase national anthem to describe the song that is played to honour national sports teams. As well as national anthems, there are unofficial anthems. So Scotland doesn’t have an agreed national anthem. There are a couple of songs that are sung at sporting events, Scotland the brave and Flower of Scotland and these are both unofficial anthems. I think that Flower of Scotland might be made the official anthem soon. Most football clubs have anthems. The most famous is probably You’ll never walk alone which is sung at Anfield. I don’t think we’d call football anthems unofficial as there is no way that they can be made official. It’s always moving to hear a crowd singing their team’s anthem together.

A bold opposition

The adjective bold means brave and not afraid. I think that we normally use the adjective bold when we’re describing a brave act that’s carried out by an underdog. If a child speaks up to defend their classmate if they think a teacher is wrong, people might describe the child as bold. You can use the adjective to talk about warriors and soldiers, but it’s less common and I think for really powerful people who face danger, we just say brave. When bravery is demonstrated by a weaker or younger person, they can be described as bold.

The phrase I used was bold opposition. The opposition are the players or team that oppose or who are against you or another team. In politics in the UK, we have two main political parties. There is the party in power, the party that is in control ... or that is supposed to be in control of the country and the opposition which is the party that is not in power. In football, you can talk about the team that your team is playing against and call them the opposition. In the story, I used the word to describe the actions and the activity that were done to stop and fight back against the English team. So if Scotland had been really easy to beat, I could have said that they put up little opposition or that the opposition was weak. However, they fought hard and never gave up so I said they put up a bold opposition.

To galvanise into action

The verb to galvanise describes the process of coating a metal in zinc to protect it and make it stronger. However, the verb is far more commonly used in a figurative sense meaning to make something stronger or more powerful. So if you look the word up in the dictionary, the first entry says to cause someone to suddenly take action by shocking or exciting them. So if you feel sorry for wildlife and then you hear about a plan that will endanger the natural habitats of the animals near you, your feelings will be galvanised and you might take action to try to stop the plan and save the wildlife. There have been many moments in history when the world has watched something terrible happening until an event, often a photograph or video, galvanises them into action. I said that England were galvanised into action after Maguire’s own goal. The team wasn’t as focussed when they had a 2 goal lead. When the score was 2-1, they realised that the result was in danger and this caused them to play more aggressively, this galvanised them into action.

Today, I’ve spoken about 6 useful words or phrases. The language I have spoken about is:

• rivalry
• contested
• underdog
• an unofficial anthem
• bold opposition
• galvanised into action

Listen to the story one more time to hear the language in context.

The world’s oldest football rivalry

150 years ago, well 150 years, nine months and 14 days ago, the first international football match was played at Hamilton Crescent, Glasgow, in Scotland. This fixture led to one of the most passionately contested and supported rivalries in the world of football The first international football match was played between Scotland and England.

The rivalry is particularly spicy because it goes beyond football. Scotland and England are for the most part good neighbours, but there are reasons why Scotland feels badly treated by England or by the government in London and when the two teams get together to play football, the desire to defeat the English team is very strong. However, the population of England is over ten times that of Scotland so the pool of footballers from which the Scottish manager can select a team is much smaller so in these meetings, Scotland is always the underdog.

On Tuesday evening, the English team travelled to Scotland’s National Stadium, Hampden Park in Glasgow to face their oldest rivals for the 116th time. Of their previous encounters, England had won 48, Scotland 26.

As the teams lined up, a lone bagpiper played the first few notes of Scotland’s unofficial anthem. The crowd started up and belted out the rest of the song with such passion that one of the young mascots covered his ears.

The English team was loaded with stars of the Premier League and Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham. With such a talented squad, it was no surprise to see England go ahead in the first half with goals from Phil Foden and Bellingham.

Scotland managed to put up a characteristically bold opposition, but failed to find a way past the England defence. Scotland’s only goal was an own goal from Harry Maguire who tried to clear a ball and accidentally pushed it into the net.

Scotland suddenly looked like they might make a comeback and this galvanised England into action and Bellingham chopped through the Scottish defence to feed Kane who scored a superb goal.

Final score: Scotland 1 - England 3

Language Challenge

Right, now it’s time for you to think about the language again. I have found examples of the words and phrases in news stories online and edited them slightly. I have removed today’s vocabulary so I want you to fill in the gaps with the language from the podcast.

Number 1. Gerard Butler, the Paisley born Hollywood action star, was pictured filming himself singing Scotland's national ________ before the 150th Anniversary Heritage international friendly match.

Number 2. In a dramatic high school volleyball match, Springfield defeated Shelbyville in three tightly-__________ sets.

Number 3. Farmers from all over the country were ___________________ by either joining the protest or organising a series of demonstrations.

Number 4. The Premier League might have the Manchester and Merseyside derbies, along with match-ups like Brighton v Crystal Palace, but the EFL has some fierce, fierce __________ across the board.

Number 5. Don't call her an ___________, this 13-year-old boxer Beth Harris-Smoke is a 'wolf' in the ring.

Number 6. As the Premier League returns this weekend, the flamboyant Frenchman has adopted a characteristically _______ new hairstyle.

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

Football phrase

Now it’s time for this week's football phrase.

This week’s football phrase is an easy one. I want to know what type of goal Harry Maguire scored in the 150th Anniversary Heritage international friendly match between Scotland and England.

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, I am going to go through the answers to last week’s language challenge.

Number 1. Junior Mondal scored what turned out to be a consolation goal for Whitby Town in the 3-1 loss at home to Ashton United.

Number 2. Guardiola yelled from the sidelines for Haaland to take the penalty they had been awarded in the closing minutes.

Number 3. The introduction of ChatGPT has lit a fire under the shares of companies that produce microchips, the brains of artificial intelligence.

Number 4. A British Red Cross volunteer who will form part of the guard of honour during the coronation has said it will be the icing on the cake for her own 60th birthday celebrations.

Number 5. Chief executive Alan Burrows says Aberdeen went all out to stop Lewis Pirie leaving for Leeds United.

Number 6. Co-captain Liam McConnell led from the front as Scotland Under 20s defeated Spain.

Number 7. Angels star Shohei Ohtani was left crushed after two home runs stole the win at the end of an epic baseball game.

Number 8. Priyanka Chopra has recently spoken about the early days of her romance with her husband Nick Jonas. When asked why she fell for him, she replied it was when he first wrote a song for her. “This is what sealed the deal,” she added.

And that’s all I have time for today. 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.