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 hard so we’re looking at more difficult football phrases and idioms.

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 phrase on the back foot.

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.

Rich: Remember you can find transcripts for all of our podcasts on the Premier Skills English website.

Jack: 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 hard so we’re looking at more difficult football phrases and idioms. These phrases can be used to talk about football but are often useful when talking about other topics.

Rich: The phrase we are looking at in this episode is: on the back foot.

Jack: We’re going to look at how this idiom is used on the football pitch and outside of football.

Rich: It has the same meaning in both contexts but we’ll give you a couple of different examples.

Jack: Like most idioms on the back foot is an informal phrase and it basically means to be in a difficult position or at a disadvantage in some way.

Rich: Outside of sport we often hear the phrase when talking about politics, business and policing. Here are some examples we found from news reports:

Jack: Police have criminals on the back foot in the war on drugs.

Rich: Britain on the back foot in second round of UK-Australia trade negotiations.

Jack: The economy ended 2019 on the back foot.

Rich: All of these examples show something or someone that is in a difficult situation.

Jack: A couple of strong collocations are to be put on the back foot and caught on the back foot. These are often used when something puts someone else in a difficult situation.

Rich: Fossil fuel businesses have been put on the back foot by the growth of renewable energies.

Jack: The phrase on the back foot actually comes from the sport of cricket. Batsmen can play on the back foot which is a defensive position or the front foot which is an attacking position.

Rich: We’ll look at the phrase on the front foot in another episode. Let’s look at how we use on the back foot when we’re talking about football.

Jack: In football, we use on the back foot when a team is being put under a lot of pressure from the opposition.

Rich: If a team is on the back foot they are struggling to defend and finding the match difficult.

Jack: If a team gets a player sent off this will probably put the rest of the team on the back foot and they will have to defend a lot.

Rich: The team are at a disadvantage and in a difficult situation. They are on the back foot.

Jack: But sometimes teams can do this successfully. Here are some example sentences.

Rich: Although Leicester started brightly, they were soon on the back foot as United pushed forward.

Jack: Gareth Bale’s pace and exemplary touch put the reigning champions on the back foot as he scored a hat-trick.

Rich: There is the final whistle!

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

Rich: Bye for now and enjoy your football.

Discuss

Which teams are going to be on the back foot this season?