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 to go down like a sack of potatoes.

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

Rich: The phrase we are looking at in this episode is: to get your act together.

Jack: Get your act together is an idiom that we can use in lots of situations. It means to start being organised and doing things more effectively so you can achieve something.

Rich: A parent might say to their teenage child: you need to get your act together if you want to pass your exams.

Jack: In this situation, the parent thinks that the teenager hasn’t been working hard enough and needs to work harder to be successful.

Rich: This idiom is often linked to success and used in conditional sentences.

Jack: She needs to get her act together, if she wants to go to university. He needs to get his act together, if he wants to get back together with his girlfriend. The company needs to get its act together if it doesn’t want to go bankrupt.

Rich: The idiom is used in the same way to talk about football.

Jack: We might use it to talk about a defence: the defence needs to get its act together - we need to stop conceding goals.

Rich: Or the attack: The strikers need to get their act together - they haven’t scored for ages.

Jack: Or the whole team: The team needs to get its act together or we’re going to get relegated.

Rich: In all of these cases, we’re talking about something that needs to be better or more organised in order to be more effective.

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

Which teams need to get their act together this season?