Learn English Through Football

This football language podcast focuses on the phrase acres of space, which is used to talk about a player’s position. The transcript for this podcast is available below, and you can also access 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 please contact us at admin@languagecaster.com or leave a question or comment on our forum. (DB=Damon)
Acres of Space – Football Language Podcast: Season 2021-22
DB: You’re listening to languagecaster.com’s football language podcast. Hello there. Thanks for dropping by. My name’s Damon, one half of the langaugecaster team. The other half is Damian, who is across the world from me in London. I, meanwhile, am in a beautiful, autumnal Tokyo. This podcast series and our site is a great place to come if you want to improve your English while also talking about the beautiful game of football.
On today’s short football language podcast, we’ll take a look at the phrase ‘acres of space‘ and some other phrases connected to it. Before we do that, if you like what we do here at languagecaster, please show us by leaving comments, sharing our podcasts and posts, and maybe also by leaving a donation to help keep us up and running.
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Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Portuguese).
Acres of Space
DB: Yes, you are listening to languagecaster.com and that message was in Portuguese – thank you Akiko!
OK, to be in acres of space. Let’s take a look at this phrase. First of all, we have acre, which is a measure of area, like hectare or square metres. An acre is roughly the size of two football pitches – actually 1.75 football pitches, but two is easy to remember.
It is an Old English word and has been largely replaced by metric measures like metres and hectares. But football, with its roots in British history, still uses a lot of old measurements: for example, the six-yard area; the penalty spot is 12 yards from the goal-line etc.
Back to the phrase, if you say a player is in acres of space, you mean there is no opponent near them. They are standing in a lot of space – acres of space.
Here’s an example from Marca:
Manchester United shifted the ball from left to right and that meant Bruno Fernandes had acres of space on the right-hand side of the box, but he fired his shot high and wide of Alisson’s goal.
Here the verb is have, or had: Fernandes had acres of space.
The Freedom of the Park
Another way to say a player has a lot of space, or too much space if you are the defending team, is to say they have the freedom of the park. When you use this phrase or acres of space, you are criticising the defending team for not being tight enough, close enough, to the player with the ball.
Here’s an example from a game last year between Leicester and Liverpool on 90mins.in:
With Leicester more or less camped inside their own third, the 21-year-old had the freedom of the park, firing characteristically inviting crosses into the box.
The opposing team can also ‘give’ a player the freedom of the park....