Learn English Through Football

In this latest football language podcast for learners of English, we look at some of the words and phrases from the recent Finalissima game between South American champions Argentina and European champions Italy at Wembley and in particular we look at the phrases ‘pull the strings‘; ‘turn provider‘ and ‘round off the win‘. You can also read the 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.

Learn English Through Football Podcast: Finalissima – Argentina vs Italy
DF: Hello again everyone and welcome to Languagecaster.com – the football-language podcast for learners of English who love the beautiful game of football. I’m Damian and I’m here in a very sunny London and I’m one half of the languagecaster team, the other member of course is Damon who’s based in Tokyo, in Japan.
Now, I was lucky enough to get a ticket to see the Argentina versus Italy Finalissima match at Wembley last night – this was the first time I have been to a live football match since March 2020 so it was great to be back at a game and of course to see Leo Messi in action. Now, he really didn’t disappoint as he dominated the game by sitting a little deeper in midfield and pulling the strings throughout the match to guide his side to a comfortable 3-0 victory over the Azzurri. So, on this podcast we look at some of the words and phrases from this game from a report from the BBC website including, ‘turned provider‘; ‘set up the opener‘ and ‘round off the win‘.
Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Italian)
Finalissima
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This is the opening line from the BBC report which is a brief explanation of what the Finalissima is – a game between the champions of Europe (Italy) and the Copa America winners, Argentina; and the word Finalissima comes from Italian and means the grand final. The report also uses the word contest which is a way of saying a match or competition between two sides – they contested the game or they contested the title, while we could also use the word battle here. They also included the word renewal to describe the fact that this game – organised by