Learn English Through Football

In this football language podcast we look back at some of the language from the Wales-Turkey Group A game on day six of the 2020 European Championships and in particular we look at the penalty miss from Gareth Bale. You can read a transcript for this podcast below, while you can also check out our glossary of footballing phrases here and visit our site to access all our previous posts and podcasts. If you have any suggestions or questions then you can contact us at admin@languagecaster.com.
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Football Language Podcast Euros 2020: Day 6 – Ballooned Over
DF: Hello everyone, this is Damian from the Learning English Through Football team – I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the 2020 European Championships. OK, as regular listeners will know, we are still posting a football expression from the Euros every day – yesterday Damon looked at the expression ‘across the face of goal‘ from the match between Germany and France. And today I’m going to look at some of the words to describe Gareth Bale’s penalty miss from the Wales vs Turkey game on day six of the Euros.
Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Turkish).
Let’s start with the phrase ‘ballooning over‘ which the Guardian used in their report on the game. When a player misses badly – very badly – with a shot by hitting the ball over the bar, actually really high over the bar, then we sometimes can hear the phrase ‘balloon over the bar‘. When we think of a hot air balloon we can picture it flying high so this is the reason we use this phrase. So, Bale got under the ball (he scooped it) and sent the ball ballooning over (the goal or the bar).
Blaze over/Sky the ball
There are other ways to describe this kind of bad miss, including to blaze over, so when players fail to work the keeper by hitting the ball too high over the bar. This phrase suggests that there was quite a lot of power in the shot but very little accuracy as the ball flies over the bar. Another verb to describe this kind of shot is to ‘sky the ball‘ which means that the ball was hit hard over the bar – the player skied their shot over the bar from close range. Perhaps to sky is when a player gets under the ball and hits it high (so similar to balloon), whereas if the ball is blazed over it suggests a more powerful strike.
Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Welsh).
Good Bye
DF: Yes, you are listening to languagecaster.com – that message was in Welsh. I don’t think the Welsh fans will mind so much about Bale’s p...