Learn English Through Football

In this week’s football language podcast for learners of English, we look back at some of the language from the Manchester derby between City and United. In particular, we look at the phrases ‘outclass‘; ‘over-run‘ and ‘restore their lead‘. 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:'fuKLAbP0TQNz5j-gLht8Gg',sig:'ngbEVKt9AvJa_SmV92OJ7aWeQ6dlcSLKNcoxF0zc6Dg=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1238983246',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })});
Learning English Through Football Podcast: 2022 Manchester Derby
DF: Hello again everyone and welcome to Languagecaster.com – the football-language podcast for learners of English who love football: the beautiful game. I’m Damian and I’m in London and on today’s short podcast I’ll be looking at some of the words and phrases from the Manchester derby that took place yesterday between Manchester City and Manchester United. To do this I am going to use a report from the BBC and focus on three expressions: ‘outclass‘; ‘over-run‘ and ‘restore their lead‘.
Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Thai)
Outclass
DF: So, in this latest Manchester derby, City ran out comfortable 4-1 winners – in fact, many pundits felt that the margin of victory could have been bigger – they could have scored even more goals. This is explained in the opening sentence of the BBC report when the writer uses the verb ‘to outclass‘ to describe City’s performance over United. Now, to outclass an opponent means to play much, much better than them, another expression that we have used on this site before is ‘to crush an opponent‘ which means that one side is so much stronger than the other side. Maybe if a team outclasses an opponent there is a suggestion that not only did they win easily but their style of football was simply much better too. In the second part of this sentence there is some information about what the result means for the Premier League title race – City’s comfortable victory means they are still top of the table and have some kind of control; they have the title in their own hands.
Over-run
Now, Manchester United did not play too badly in the first half and even though they went into the break 2-1 down (this means they were losing 2-1 at half-time) they would have been happy with ho...