Learn English Through Football

In this football language podcast we look at the phrases ‘to let fly‘ and ‘dipping‘ which came from the Guardian report on the 2020 European Championship match between Belgium and Portugal and are used when players take a shot. 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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Let fly and Dipping: Football Language Podcast Euro 2020 Last 16 – Day 2
DF: Hello everyone, this is Damian from the Languagecaster.com team – I hope you are all doing well. As you know, we are posting a football expression from the Euro 2020 tournament every day, Damon looked at some of the words and phrases from the Austria vs Italy last-16 game yesterday and today I am focusing on the game between the number one ranked side in the world Belgium against the holders Portugal.
Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Swedish).
Let’s have a look at how the goal in this game was described. And this is from the Guardian newspaper.  So this means that the Belgian player Thorgan Hazard carried the ball from the left side of the pitch towards the penalty area and then hit a shot towards the goal. Now this shot had lots of power and one way of describing this is to say that a player has let fly which suggests power and also that the ball is moving – or flying – through the air. Other ways of describing a hard, powerful shot is a thunderbolt. The report goes on to use the adjective ‘dipping‘ which means that the ball moved in an arc-like direction, so from high to low – and so the ball looked as if it was going over the bar but then dropped – or dipped – below the bar. We can sometimes hear the phrase ‘ a dipping volley‘ which means that a player has hit the ball in the air and then the ball travels up and then down on its way towards the goal. Hazard’s goal was a wonderful effort – a powerful, dipping volley.
Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Dutch).
Good Bye
DF: Yes, you are listening to languagecaster.com – that message was in Dutch. Don’t forget that there’s a transcript to this podcast and lots of vocab support which you can access by coming along to our site. OK, that’s it for this short podcast – we hope you enjoyed our look at the phrases ‘let fly‘ and ‘dipping volley‘ from the 2020 Euros...