This Week: Champions v Champions

Champions v Champions

Laura: Hello my name’s Laura and welcome to our weekly round-up section called ‘This Week’ on Premier Skills English.

Rich: Hi there. I’m Rich. We’ve got lots of interesting words and phrases to help you talk about football in English.

Jack: And I’m Jack and we hope you are all well.

Laura: The 2019/20 season is officially over.

Jack: Boo!

Laura: But guess what?

Rich: What?

Laura:: The 2020/21 season has already kicked off.

Jack: Hooray!

Rich: This week our headlines include news about this season’s Premier League fixtures and news from the Champions League.

Jack: But, more importantly, our main aim is to focus on some football English for you to learn.

Laura: We’ll look at three football headlines from the last seven days and focus on some useful bits of vocabulary from each story. 

Rich: And we want you to use and practise these words and phrases by interacting with Premier League fans from around the world in our comments section.

Jack: And a little later we’ll also have a Premier League prediction for you. This week we’re going to take a look at the official curtain-raiser to the English football season: the Community Shield. 

Laura: If you listen to us on Apple Podcasts, you can leave your comments in the review section. We do read all the reviews and would love to hear from you.

Rich: You can find all our latest content on the Premier Skills English homepage or the Premier Skills-British Council Facebook page. 

Jack: Don’t forget that we also have our weekly Premier Skills English podcast that is released every Friday. Every week we help you with some different vocabulary or an aspect of grammar.

Laura: Our latest podcast is called English & the UK: Leeds.

Rich: We talk about things you can do and see in the city of Leeds and Leeds United football club who have been promoted to the Premier League.

Laura: And in our roleplay, Rowan is in Leeds city centre asking for directions.

Jack: Rich makes his northern accent even stronger than usual. Have a listen and see if you can understand what he’s talking about.

Rich: You can find the lesson on the homepage on the Premier Skills English website. 

Laura: OK, you’re now going to hear our three headlines. After each headline, we’ll have a little discussion and look at some vocabulary. 

Jack: The words and phrases we are looking at this week are: fixture, a mouth-watering clash, to draw level, to come back and haunt your old club, poke home and rusty.

Rich: Later on we’ll also have a language challenge for you to have a go at so you need to be ready for that.

Headline 1

Rich: Champions clash on opening day.

Jack: The new Premier League fixtures are out and there is a mouth-watering clash on the opening day with Premier League champions Liverpool taking on the Champions of the Championship Leeds United. The opening weekend is the 12th of September although the Manchester clubs opening fixtures will be a week later due to their involvement in European competitions.

Laura: The fixtures are out already. The fixtures have been released. There is going to be a lot of football this year.

Rich: Yes, most Premier League clubs are back in training and playing pre-season friendlies.

Jack: A very quick turnaround that’s for sure. Let’s look at some language. Fixture is the obvious word to look at here because we have been talking about the opening day fixtures in the Premier League.

Laura: A fixture, very generally, means a scheduled match but let’s look at it in a bit more detail.

Rich: The Premier League fixtures have been announced. There is a fixture list which is a schedule of matches throughout the season.

Jack: These matches are scheduled - they are fixed - they can’t usually be changed.

Laura: So we use fixture in terms of something that is scheduled but we also use it to describe the history of matches between two teams.

Rich: Imagine a match between Manchester United and Aston Villa has just kicked off. A commentator may say something like Aston Villa haven’t scored in this fixture since 1982 or Marcus Rashford has never scored in this fixture.

Jack: Manchester United may have played 30 matches against Aston Villa 30 since 1982 and Rashford might have played a few matches against Villa. We’re using the word fixture to highlight historical meetings between the two teams.

Laura: Let’s look at another phrase. We said Liverpool against Leeds will be a mouth-watering clash.

Rich: A clash is a match or fixture between two teams. A clash is used more generally in connection with a fight or an argument between two people or groups of people.

Jack: Clash is often used in newspapers and the media to make the match sound more exciting.

Laura: That’s what we did in the headline. We also used the word mouth-watering which is an adjective we usually use to describe food that looks so good you want to eat it immediately.

Rich: But we can use mouth-watering more figuratively too. We said a mouth-watering clash which means a match that is so exciting that I want to watch it right now.

Jack: Let’s move on to our second headline.

Headline 2

Jack: Bayern make it six in Champions League.

Laura: Bayern Munich drew level with Liverpool when they beat Paris St. Germain to claim their sixth Champions League title. The German champions beat the French Champions 1-0 through a Kingsley Coman header. The ex-PSG player came back to his haunt old club and now only Real Madrid and AC Milan have won the competition more times than Bayern.

Rich: I think Bayern Munich are definitely the team to beat at the moment and Neymar didn’t get a chance in the second half.

Jack: I think Liverpool and City will be back stronger this season.

Laura: The first bit of language we want to look at here is to draw level. To draw level means to become equal to someone else in a competition that they had been winning before.

Rich: Liverpool were ahead of Bayern Munich in the number of times they have won the European Cup but now they have both won it six times. Bayern have drawn level with Liverpool.

Jack: You also see the phrase in match reports - journalists use it to mean equalise. You might read things like City drew level just before halftime or Giroud drew Chelsea level with a fantastic header.

Laura: The next bit of language I want to look at is to come back to haunt an old club. It’s a bit of a cliche but I hear it a lot when a player scores a goal against the team they used to play for.

Jack: Yes, it a bit of a cliche and seems to be the phrase that commentators always use when it happens. To haunt is something that ghosts usually do. Ghosts haunt old castles for example. 

Rich: We also use haunt to describe things that cause problems over a long time because of something you did. A bad decision you make may come back and haunt you.

Laura: It’s in this way that we use it in football. It was a bad decision to sell the player and he or she comes back to haunt you by scoring a goal against you.

Jack: Let’s move on to our final headline.

Headline 3

Laura: Arsenal lose out to PSG in Champions League quarter-finals.

Rich: Arsenal lost 2-1 at home to PSG who progressed to the semi-final stage of the Champions League in Spain. Arsenal gave their fans hope when Beth Mead drew the Gunners level but PSG found a winner when Signe Bruun poked home. Arsenal looked rusty which was understandable as they hadn’t played since March and the French team took full advantage.

Jack: That was difficult. Not having played a competitive match since March. 

Laura: The new Women’s Super League kicks off on the 6th of September with Manchester United against Chelsea. Let’s look at some language.

Rich: We said that Signe Bruun poked home the winner. On the pitch, to poke means to stretch with your leg and to connect with the ball with your toes. Home is the back of the net so to poke home means to score a goal by stretching your leg out to connect with the ball.

Jack: The final word we’re going to look at this week is rusty. We said Arsenal looked rusty because they hadn’t played for a long time.

Laura: It is basically used to say that you are not as good as you usually are because you haven’t been playing or practising.

Rich: When a new season starts or players come back from injuries they are often described as rusty if they don’t play as well as they normally do.

Jack: OK. We’ve looked at three stories and six bits of vocabulary in our headlines. The words and phrases we’ve looked at are: fixture, a mouth-watering clash, to draw level, to come back and haunt your old club, poke home and rusty.

Laura: Have a listen to the headlines again and see if you understand the vocabulary we’ve looked at. 

Prediction

Rich: It’s time for our Premier League prediction. This weekend sees Arsenal take on Liverpool in the Community Shield.

Jack: The Community Shield is the traditional curtain-raiser to the English football season.

Laura: Curtain-raiser?

Jack: A curtain-raiser is a small event that happens before a more important event - it starts everything off. The phrase comes from the theatre when there used to be a short performance before the main performance.

Laura: So the Community Shield is the curtain-raiser for the rest of the season.

Jack: Exactly. It is called the Super Cup in many other countries and is usually played between the league champions and the cup winners from the previous season.

Laura: And this season for the first-ever time there will be two matches at the same venue on the same day. First, there is the women’s community shield between Chelsea and Manchester City and then the men’s community shield between Liverpool and Arsenal.

Jack: So who is going to win Rich?

Rich: Well, it’s difficult to say. It will be the first time City and Chelsea have played a competitive fixture in months and Liverpool and Arsenal might be a little rusty, too. I’d usually go for the League Champions as they are usually the better team but I’m going to go for Manchester City to win the women’s community shield and Arsenal to win the men’s community shield.

Jack: Really? You’re going for Arsenal to win.

Rich: Not really, Jack. Liverpool 3-0 Arsenal and Manchester City 2-0 Chelsea.

Laura: He had you gong there! So, there are our predictions. What’s yours? Do you agree? You can make your predictions on the Premier Skills English website.

Language Challenge

Jack: To finish up the show we’ve got a quick language challenge connected to this week’s vocabulary.

Rich: Earlier we used the phrase to draw level so we’ve thought of three more sentences that each use a phrasal verb with draw. Can you complete the missing words? I think it’s difficult this week.

Laura: Neymar is definitely on the move to the Premier League. I’ve heard they’re drawing ______ the contract now.

Jack: The team need to draw _____ all their experience if they want to get back into this match.

Rich: I’m not going to get drawn _____ this argument again Jack. Liverpool have better strikers than Arsenal.

Laura: We want you to write the correct answers on the Premier Skills English website where we have some more questions and activities connected to this week’s show.

Jack: Or write your answer on Apple Podcasts if that’s where you listen to us. Just write the answers in the review section and say hi.

Rich: Before we finish we just wanted to say that we hope you found this lesson useful and we hope that all of you stay fit and healthy.

Laura: Bye for now and enjoy your football.