Premier Vocabulary is a mini-podcast for you to learn football English one word at a time. We have three different levels for you: easy, medium and hard.

This episode is easy so we’re looking at common football words and phrases. Things you use and need to know to play the game.

Summary

Learn more football vocabulary with Premier Skills English. Each lesson in our Premier Vocabulary section looks at one football word or phrase. This lesson looks at the word ball.

You can find more lessons on the side of this page.

Transcript

Rich: Hello my name’s Rich and welcome to Premier Skills English - Premier Vocabulary.

Jack: Hi there! I’m Jack. We’re here to help you with your football English. Premier Vocabulary is a mini-podcast for you to learn football English one word at a time.

Rich: We have three different levels for you: easy, medium and hard.

Jack: This episode is easy so we’re looking at common football words and phrases; things you use and need to know to play the game.

Rich: The word we are looking at in this episode is ball.

Jack: I am sure all of you know the word ball so we’re going to look at some common collocations that use this word.

Rich: Collocations are words that often go together. Let’s start with the ball that is used in official matches.

Jack: This is the match ball. Traditionally, match balls are usually of better quality than balls that are used for training.

Rich: When a player scores a hat-trick, three goals in a match, the player gets to take home the match ball.

Jack: The next collocation is ball boy or ball girl.

Rich: Ball girls or ball boys are the young people - often youth players at clubs - who fetch the ball when it goes out of play and gives it back to the players.

Jack: Let’s look at some verb-noun collocations. OK, we can kick the ball which is when we use our feet, we can head the ball which is when we use our head and we can chest the ball which is when we use our chest.

Rich: A player might chest the ball down to another player or use his chest to control the ball.

Jack: That’s another collocation: to control the ball. We usually control the ball with our feet but can also use our thighs and chest to control the ball.

Rich: Good ball control is very important and is something that is worked on on the training pitch.

Jack: If you have good ball control you are less likely to give away the ball.

Rich: That’s another collocation to give away the ball - to lose possession of the ball.

Jack: Let’s look at a couple more collocations. We often speak about a through ball.

Rich: A through ball is a type of pass - a defence-splitting pass.

Jack: A through ball is a pass that is sent between defenders for a forward to chase band hopefully get to before it reaches the goalkeeper.

Rich: Another phrase we hear a lot is a ball from. Listen to this:

Jack: A great ball from De Bruyne and Sterling nets his second of the game.

Rich: A ball from is used by commentators to tell us which player passed the ball.

Jack: OK, we’ve just looked at ten collocations with the word ball. Do you think you have learned all of them? Are you ready to use them?

Rich: Listen again or look back at the transcript on the website and find the ten collocations with goal that we have used.

Jack: There is the final whistle!

Rich: We’ll be back soon with more Premier Vocabulary from Premier Skills English.

Jack: Bye for now and enjoy your football.

Discuss

Can you control the ball well?

What were the ten collocations with ball in this episode?