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. These phrases can be used to talk about football but are also useful when talking about other topics.

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 keep your eye on the 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 hard so we're looking at more difficult football phrases and idioms. These phrases can be used to talk about football but will also be useful to use when talking about other topics too.

Rich: The phrase we are looking at in this episode is: to keep your eye on the ball.

Jack: Footballers are always told to keep their eyes on the ball; especially when they are defending. It means to always watch the ball.

Rich: A goalkeeper or defender needs to keep their eye on the ball when crosses come into the box.

Jack: They need to keep their eye on the ball so they can catch it easily or head the ball away from danger.

Rich: Defenders are told to keep their eyes on the ball when attackers run at them with the ball at their feet.

Jack: Cristiano Ronaldo confuses defenders with all those stepovers, but if they just kept their eyes on the ball they would be fine.

Rich: Easy for you to say!

Jack: To keep your eye on the ball is also an idiom that is used away from football.

Rich: It means to give your complete attention to something and not to be distracted by things that are less important.

Jack: It's used to speak about business quite a lot. A business person needs to keep his or her eye on the ball so competitors and other businesses don't take away their customers.

Rich: You need to keep your eye on the ball. It's easy to repeat when I say it slowly but listen at normal speed. You need to keep your eye on the ball.

Jack: What happened there? When you said it slowly I heard the words 'eye' and 'on' but then at normal speed I heard the word 'iron'.

Rich: Pronunciation and connected speech can make phrases difficult to understand. Small grammar words like prepositions often become weaker.

Jack: In this phrase the preposition 'on' is a weak form so we just use the schwa /er/ and on becomes /ern/.

Rich: Listen to the phrase again and have a go at repeating it at the same speed.

Jack: You need to keep your eye on the ball.

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

• In what situations do you need to keep your eye on the ball?
• Have you ever taken your eye off the ball and caused a problem?

Write your answers in the comments section below.