This Week: Back with a bang

Welcome to This Week from Premier Skills English, a weekly review of football action for learners of English from across the globe. In This Week, Jack talks about stories from this week in the Premier League and there are lots of football English words and phrases for you to learn.

If the listening was difficult, you can listen and read the transcript at the same time.

Read the transcript and listen at the same time.

Hello, my name’s Jack and welcome to the weekly round-up called This Week on Premier Skills English.

In This Week, we’ve got lots of interesting words and phrases to help you talk about football in English.

If you are listening to this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify you can also visit the Premier Skills English website at premierskillsenglish.britishcouncil.org where you’ll be able to download the podcast.

On the Premier Skills English website, you can read the transcript and join the Premier Skills English community by completing a language task in the comments section. This will really help you remember the new words and phrases from the story from the Premier League.

This week, I’m talking about Manchester City who travelled to St James’ Park to take on Newcastle United and about the return to the Premier League of Kevin De Bruyne who was injured on the first day of the season.

The words and phrases I am going to talk about today are:

A string of things
Formidable
To take something for granted
A high defensive line
Audacious
Deft
Consecutive
To subside
To break through something
To be content with something

Listen out for this vocabulary in the story.

After the story, there will be a language focus and then there will be a language challenge for you and then at the end of the podcast, there will be a new football phrase.

But before that, I want to look at last week’s football phrase. If you didn’t hear it last week, here’s one more chance to guess now.

Last week’s football phrase was a ***-**. This is a noun that means a goal that is scored by an attacker from very close range with very little effort. The skill comes from timing a run right so that when the cross comes the attacker is in the right place and can score with a ***-**.

Congratulations to Elchueco from Argentina, Alex from Ukraine, Toha_23 from Ukraine, AndreTorre102 from Brazil, Wojciech M. from Poland, Denis2000 from Belarus, Vietnguyenngo from Vietnam, Lukáš from Czechia, Mobeckham from Turkey, Hasan from Turkey, Ken from Japan, Ryohei from Japan and Strong from Vietnam. Welcome to Premier Skills English Strong - that’s a good nickname you have chosen for yourself... one might even call it audacious.

You all worked out that the phrase I was looking for was a tap-in.

Keep listening till the end of the podcast for a new football phrase.

Now it’s time for this week’s story.

De Bruyne is back with a bang

Manchester City travelled to St James’ Park on Saturday to face Newcastle United. Eddie Howe’s side has been playing some good football but the Magpies have suffered a string of losses over the past month. At home, they are still a formidable opponent and the visiting champions were not going to take anything for granted.

Shortly after kick-off, it looked like Newcastle had caught City’s high defensive line napping as Isak ran through the defenders to collect a long ball before squaring it to Gordon who put it in the net. However, the assistant referee had raised his flag and VAR confirmed Isak had been offside.

City were the first to score when Kyle Walker found some space on the right. He played the cross with some power for Bernardo Silva who scored with an audacious touch, a deft tap of his right heel sent the ball into the net.

Silva nearly scored again minutes later which lit a fire under Newcastle. The home side launched a series of attacks and the champions struggled to contain them.

Schär won the ball for Newcastle on the edge of his box. He passed to Guimaraes who played a beautiful ball for Alexander Isak who was making a run. Isak sidestepped Walker before curling the ball into the top right-hand corner, scoring in his 4th consecutive game to level things up.

Minutes later, Gordon put the home side ahead with a fantastic solo effort. Gordon ran the ball into the box from the left-hand side before scoring with an outstanding finish, right into the side netting.

As the cheers subsided, City settled into a more serious passing mode, taking control of the midfield, though they were having problems finding enough space at the front to break through.

Until the 74th minute when Bernardo Silva was substituted for Kevin De Bruyne, who hadn‘t played any Premier League football since suffering a hamstring injury on the first day of the season.

After less than five minutes on the pitch, the Belgian cut through the midfield to the edge of the box before passing a beautifully weighted if somewhat cheeky shot between Schär’s legs and into the goal.

In the 91st minute, not content with a comeback goal, De Bruyne played a perfect ball through to Oscar Bobb who somehow managed to control the ball, showing incredible composure as defenders and keeper slid in to set himself up to shoot.

Final score: Newcastle United 2 - 3 Manchester City

The words and phrases from the story that I want to talk about are:

A string of things
Formidable
To take something for granted
A high defensive line
Audacious
Deft
Consecutive
To subside
To break through something
To be content with something

A string of things

A string is normally a piece of thread, like a very thin rope that you use to tie things. I use string in my garden to tie plants to canes, to support plants. You also find string in bead necklaces. A string of beads is a string that has been threaded through a series of beads so they can be hung as a bracelet or necklace. We also use the term to talk about a series of events, events that happen one after the other, a bit like a string of beads.

Formidable

If something is formidable, then it is scary or intimidating. Usually, it means strong or powerful or forceful so you might talk about your opponent in a competition as a formidable opponent if you think it’s going to be difficult to beat them.

To take something for granted

If you take something for granted, you believe that something is true or that a situation is just normal, that it’s nothing special, without really thinking about it or doing anything about it. If you take something for granted, it’s like you don’t value it or you don’t think it’s important, it’s just the way things are. We also use the phrase about people; to take someone for granted, when someone doesn’t recognise what other people have done for them. So if you have a good friend who always gives you a lift to school, if you are not grateful for their help, because you just expect it, you are taking them for granted. When Manchester City went to St James’ Park, I said that they were not going to take anything for granted. They probably expected to win, but they knew that they were still going to have to work hard.

A high defensive line

Manchester City play with a high defensive line. This means that their defenders try to stay up the pitch towards the halfway line. This helps them control the midfield, but it means they are at risk of opposition players running past them, if the attackers can time their runs well.

Audacious

This is an advanced adjective that is a combination of risky or brave and cheeky or disrespectful. Most of the examples online are in stories about sports and are about a team or player taking a risk in a serious competition. There is one story about an audacious burglary that involved thieves sawing a hole through the floor of a shop selling silver antiques. The noun audacity is also quite common and means the courage to do something that other people find shocking. You might hear someone say that it took audacity to do something. It’s also used by people who think that they are important or that have authority. For example, in Karate, a black belt is more advanced than a yellow belt. So if a yellow belt challenges a black belt in a competition, the black belt might say: I can’t believe that she had the audacity to challenge me.

Deft

This is not a very common adjective but it appeared in the analysis of Silva’s goal in two different match reports so I wanted to include it. It means quick and skilful and is used to describe a quick action, something small and not very dramatic but that takes skill. It’s most commonly used in a figurative sense to talk about quick and skilful or well-thought-out responses to questions. You might read about a politician who answered questions about a difficult topic with quick and deft responses.

Consecutive

Things that are consecutive, follow on from one another, one after the other in a sequence without any interruptions or breaks. One of my kids has music lessons on a Monday evening. He never misses a lesson and has had a lesson each Monday for the last 6 consecutive Mondays. This isn’t true as the music school closed for Christmas, but you get the idea. I said that Isak’s goal meant that this was the 4th consecutive match that he’d scored in.

To subside

To subside means to become less strong. We generally use it when something fades away slowly. If you stub your toe, that is you accidentally bang your foot into something so your toe gets hurt, the pain can be very strong, but it slowly fades away; the pain subsides over time. I said that the cheers subsided. When a team scores a goal, the fans cheer really loudly and then the cheers start fading and are less loud and less loud until they stop.

To break through something

I spoke about this quite recently. If there is a barrier or something from stopping you doing something and you are able to get past it, you can say that you broke through the barrier. In football, the barrier is the opposition's defence. If a team breaks through to score, then they get past the opposition’s defence. You can use the phrase outside of football if there is a barrier that you need to get past. So this might be a physical barrier, like a fence; you might have to break through a fence. Or it could be a mental barrier. My wife was afraid of water and couldn’t swim and that was something she managed to break through when she started swimming lessons.

To be content with something

If you are content then you feel happy and safe and satisfied. You are happy with your situation and feel no need to change anything. If you are content with something, then you accept it and have no desire to change it. So, my car is a good car. It’s not very new and it’s not very fancy, but it does everything I need and it is comfortable so I have no interest in changing it. I am content with my car.

I think I should also mention the phrase in the title. I said that De Bruyne was back with a bang. If something is done with a bang, then it happens in a very exciting way. So a film might start with a bang if it starts with a really exciting scene. It’s common to say that something starts or finishes or ends with a bang and also for people to return or come back with a bang if they return in an exciting way, with some sort of spectacle or surprising event.

Today, I’ve spoken about 10 useful words and phrases. The words and phrases I have spoken about are:

A string of things
Formidable
To take something for granted
A high defensive line
Audacious
Deft
Consecutive
To subside
To break through something
To be content with something

Listen to the story one more time to hear this language in context.