Learn English Through Football

In this football language podcast we look at the phrases ‘end a drought‘ and ‘to stun‘ which came from the 2021 Copa America final match between Brazil and Argentina. 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.
Embed from Getty Imageswindow.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'uApONl11QxJNjzeJJGo6Cw',sig:'VSo47tI6RBdWaOiqlyfW8tLOsfeRfEdZlQeXGczAQBg=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1328078565',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })});
Learning English Through Football Podcast: 2021 Copa America Final – End a Drought
DF: Hello everyone, this is Damian from the Languagecaster.com team – I hope you are all doing well. OK, as regular listeners will know myself and Damon have been posting some language podcasts from the Euro 2020 tournament over the past month but on today’s show we look at some of the words and phrases from the 2021 Copa América final played in Brazil over the weekend and in particular we look at the phrase, ‘end a drought‘.
Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Portuguese).
End a drought
  This was the headline from the Guardian newspaper about the Argentinian win over Brazil in the 2021 Copa América final – the first win for the Argentinians in 28 years. So, if a teams win a trophy after a long time we can say that they have ended their drought. Now drought usually means that there has been no rainfall in a region for a long time and so when it is used in football it refers to this long period of time without winning a game or scoring a goal. So, for example we can say that a striker ended their (goal) drought after scoring for the first time in 10 games or that a team can end their ten-year drought; that’s a period of time in which they have not won a trophy. We can also use this expression to describe the fact that Leo Messi has finally won a title at international level – he ended his drought with this Copa América win.
Stun
Another key term from this headline in the Guardian report is the verb ‘to stun‘ which means to shock or surprise your opponents. In this example, Argentina stunned their rivals Brazil in their home Maracanã Stadium. Brazil rarely lose at home while, as we have already seen, Argentina had not won a title in almost three decades so this result was something of a surprise – Brazil were stunned by Argentina.
Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Japanese).
Good Bye
DF: Yes, you are listening to languagecaster.com – that message was in Japanese. 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,