Learn English Through Football

On today’s football language listening post we look at some words and phrases connected to creating chances in football and in particular the verbs, ‘to fashion’; ‘to set up’ and ‘to conjure up‘. For this audio report there is a transcript which is great for learners and teachers of English. If you have questions or comments about this, or any other football phrase, you can email us at: admin@languagecaster.com.
Football Language: Creating Chances
DF: Hello everyone, this is Damian from the Learning English Through Football team – we hope you are all well and in this short football language podcast we are going to look at some verbs connected to the creation of chances in football: to fashion a chance, to set up a chance, to engineer a chance and to conjure up a chance.
Stinger: Hi my name’s David and I’m from London and I’m an Arsenal fan and you are listening to languagecaster.com.
DF: We use the word ‘chance‘ in football to describe a time during the game when a team has the possibility to score a goal. These chances can be described as ‘clear’, that is, there is a high possibility of scoring or converting the chance or maybe the chance is only a half-chance, which obviously means there is much less chance of scoring. But what kind of language can we use to describe how these chances are made?
Set up a chance
Well, in addition to the verb, ‘to make’, we can also use the verbal phrase ‘to set up a chance‘, so for example, ‘Maddison set up a clear chance for Vardy’ means that Leicester’s Vardy had a chance to score thanks to his team mate Maddison. We can also say to set up a goal which is when the chance has been converted.
Fashion/Engineer a chance
Another verb that can be used with ‘chance’ is to create – to create a chance. So, you might hear the phrase ‘Manchester City created a lot of chances but were unable to score’ which means they failed to score despite making a lot of opportunities. Another verb that collocates with ‘chance’ is to ‘fashion a chance‘ – to fashion usually refers to someone making something with their hands but in football it means to create or make a chance, for example, the playmaker fashioned a wonderful chance for the striker who then slotted the ball home. We can also hear the verb, ‘to engineer a chance‘ which means something similar to fashion, though maybe not as common.
Conjure up a chance
Sometimes we say that a chance has been created from nothing, which means that an opportunity to score a goal has appeared from nowhere and when this happens we might say that it was conjured up as this has a sense of something magical – the verb to conjure is associated with magic. The winger conjured up a chance out of nothing when she beat the defender suggests that no one was expecting the chance to be created but the player did something special; something magical.
Stinger: ‘You are listening to languagecaster.com’ (in Catalan).
DF: Thanks everyone for listening – we hope you enjoyed our look at the five verbs that link with the noun ‘chance‘: ‘to fashion‘; ‘to conjure up‘; ‘to engineer‘; ‘to set up...