Learn English Through Football

This football language podcast looks back at the third day of the last 16 action and the two ties between Spain and Croatia and France and Switzerland. We focus on the word goalfest. 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. (DB=Damon)
Goalfest – FootballLanguage: Euro 2020: Last 16 Day 3
DB: You’re listening to languagecaster.com’s football language Euro 2020 podcast. Hello everyone and welcome to our Euro 2020 football language podcast. My name is Damon, one half of the languagecaster team. I’m based in Tokyo and Damian, who is the other side of the world, is in London. Well, what a day. Perhaps one of the greatest days of European Championship action as Spain took on Croatia and France faced Switzerland.
These two games produced 14 goals between them. That is an amazing number, more than were scored in the whole of Group D in qualifying and the same as Group A. That is why I want to dedicate the football phrase goalfest to this day of action!
Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (Spanish).
Goalfest
DB: Yes you are listening to languagecaster and our football language podcast and that message was in Spanish.
So, goalfest: what does it mean? Well, what a wonderful word, a blend of the noun goal and the word festival. Festival, which of course means big party, carnival, celebration, has been clipped, or shortened, to ‘fest’ and added to goal to give us goalfest. A festival of goals. It gives the impression of craziness, of madness, of abandon, and that’s what these two games gave us.
Spain vs Croatia finished 3-3 in 90 minutes and 5-3 to the Spanish after extra time. Likewise, France vs Switzerland ended 3-3, but extra time was a stalemate, no more goals were scored. That game swung Switzerland’s way only when Mbappe swung his foot and his penalty was saved in the penalty shootout.
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Here is the BBC describing the earlier game: “Euro 2020: Croatia 3-5 Spain – all the goals in 90 seconds in thrilling Euros goalfest.” Followed by another sub-heading: “Relive all the action from the eight-goal thriller between Croatia and Spain in their last-16 Euro 2020 tie.”
Thriller
The second heading uses thriller in place of goalfest, so ‘thrilling Euro goalfest‘ becomes ‘eight-goal thriller‘. When using thriller you can add the number of goals. Here is