Learn English Through Football

In this football language podcast we look at phrases linked to penalties from the West Ham versus Manchester United Premier League game from the weekend – we use a report from the Guardian newspaper to do this. 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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Penalties – Football Language Podcast: 2021-22 Season West Ham vs Manchester United
DF: Hello everyone, this is Damian from the Languagecaster.com team – I hope you are all doing well. Now, on this short football language podcast, we look at some of the words and phrases connected to penalties from the West Ham versus Manchester United game. Manchester United star Ronaldo felt he should have had three penalties in his favour but the referee said no on each occasion, while the final incident of the game saw West Ham captain Mark Noble brought on as a substitute to take an injury-time penalty which he subsequently missed. So with all this drama in mind, we explain the expressions, ‘poorly struck shot‘ and ‘to turn down a penalty claim‘.
Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Korean).
Poorly Struck Shot
This part of the report describes how the West Ham captain Mark Noble missed a last-minute penalty because his shot was poorly struck – he struck or hit the ball badly and that was too near the keeper. The Manchester United keeper David De Gea, who had not saved a penalty in almost six years, cleared the ball away – he batted it away to his left – another way of saying this would be to palm or push the ball away. An amazing end to the game.
Turn down the penalty claim
The other big talking point from the game involved, of course, Cristiano Ronaldo who felt he should have had three penalties all of which, however, were turned down – denied or waved away – by the referee. So, when a referee turns down a penalty claim it means they don’t award a penalty; the player is asking the referee, ‘is this a penalty?’ – that’s why we call it a claim. Some pundits felt that if the first two penalties had been awarded then they would have been seen as