Learn English Through Football

Football Language Podcast – 2019 Arsenal vs Manchester United: This week’s football-language podcast looks ahead to the Arsenal-Manchester United game on Sunday as the battle for the top four heats up. We aso look back at an extraordinary week of Champions League football in our review of the football week – the good, the bad and the ugly. After that we have another football-language quiz question which we follow with an explanation of some football language from the week – this time we look at two meanings of the phrase ‘to snatch‘. Of course, we finish up the show with our weekly predictions competition. If you’d like the transcript to the show please show your support by becoming a patron (through Patreon). With the transcript you can improve your English by reading as you listen, or if you are a teacher of English you can use the transcript to make several activities for your learners. If you have questions or comments, email us at: admin@languagecaster.com (Damian=DF, Damon=DB).



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Introduction



DF: You are listening to languagecaster.com’s football-language podcast. Welcome everyone to the podcast for all lovers of the beautiful game of football, and those who want to improve their English language skills. My name’s Damian and I am in London where the weather is very wet and windy – typical March weather! It’s just me this week as Damon, who of course is the other member of the languagecaster team, is busy in Tokyo but he’ll be back with us next week.
I wonder if Damon saw any football last week? I was at Wembley last weekend to see the North London derby and then watched quite a lot of the Champions League action on Tuesday and Wednesday: Spurs’ win over Dortmund, Manchester United’s amazing comeback win over PSG and then I watched the extra-time battle between Porto and Roma which the Portuguese side eventually won 3-1. Some really great games.
Line-up



DF: Right, what do we have on the show this week? Well, we start with a review of some of the good, the bad and the ugly from the world of football and in particular from the Champions League and then we follow this with a football-language quiz. Then we explain a football phrase from the week while at the end we have a look at some predictions from the week.
DF: This week’s football language is ‘to snatch‘. This verb is heard mainly in two senses. First of all, let’s look at the general meaning of the verb to snatch. A dictionary definition might say to snatch is to grab something quickly, often in a rude way, or to steal something by taking it quickly. In football the first way the phrase is used has the second sense, that of to steal something. You may often hear the phrase ‘team A snatched a draw in the last minutes of the game’ for example. This means that the team scored a goal against the run of play,