Episode 16 - How to talk about football in English

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, welcome to the 3 English Experts. I'm Dave. I'm Rebecca. And I'm Birgit. And welcome to this episode. 3 English Experts is your English podcast to help you speak better English and create a positive and happy mindset for your English learning journey. Hi, and welcome to this episode. Before we kick off, I would just like to apologise for my microphone quality on this episode. Unfortunately, I had my settings wrong. And as you know, we're still quite new to this podcasting game. So mistakes unfortunately happen. So I hope you listen anyway. It's really a fun episode about football. My apologies. Hi, everyone. So here we are again. Welcome back. And in this episode, we're going to talk about the beautiful game football. As you know, the Euros are starting soon in Germany. Germany hosting this year, only a week or so away now. And so we thought, maybe it'd be fun to have a bit of a talk about football, typical vocabulary differences between English, the Premier League and the Bundesliga. And we are all football fans. So we all have something to say. Before yet, I'll go straight away to Birgit. So Birgit, who's your team? Who do you support? And yeah, who do your family support? Yes. Hello, everybody. We are a little divided in our family. My husband, he's from Düsseldorf. He's always been a Düsseldorf fan. Fortuna, second league. And I think the speciality about Fortuna is they gave away tickets for free, didn't they? So to fill the stadiums. Oh yes, they did. They did. It was something really special. I think a very good idea. Only the bad thing or the thing is that you have to hang on to Düsseldorf because they were once in the first league. But they dropped down very soon. And I think it's always about when will they be back again? And my husband can live with the fact that our son is not a Düsseldorf fan, but Mönchengladbach team, a German team. That's a nice story. And I think a lot of our friends who are also Mönchengladbach, Borussia Mönchengladbach fans don't know the story. And that was really interesting. Really? They haven't heard about that. So we need to talk about that. When I remember it correctly, it was like five years ago or something when they... Even longer. It's quite a long time ago. Premier League they played. Yeah. And then they visited which town in England they were guests. And then there was a pub where the owner wanted to show the game and he wanted to write the name outside on the plate. So Borussia Mönchengladbach. And he couldn't bother. So he just wrote a German team. He tried, I think, and he crossed it out a few times because he couldn't spell it. So he just gave up. Okay. And then it was in the papers and on the media. And that was funny. And even Borussia Mönchengladbach made some fan articles out of them. And when I thought today, what are we going to talk about today? Football vocabulary. I was thinking of the word Einlaufkind because that's what our son was when Mönchengladbach played here in the stadium. 2016, I think that was. And I couldn't think of a word. And now we've discussed it before our recording and it's not easy to translate. So we have agreed on players. Child mascot. Mascot. Yes. Yes, exactly. And how did you do that? How did you get him to be a mascot? Do you have to apply or how does that work? Oh, that was coincidence. I had an email from the bank. I think they were looking for mascots. And I pushed it into the bin basket. And I thought, oh, hang on. That was Mönchengladbach. And so I took it out again, applied. And we were lucky. Yeah, that was just coincidence. Okay. So Dusseldorf and Gladbach in your family. Yes. Okay. Moving over to Dave. I'm not going to like what he's going to say. Who do you support Dave? Well, Rebecca. Hello, everyone. First of all, as maybe you know, Rebecca and I both come from Sheffield. I'm from the blue half of Sheffield in the north. And Rebecca is from the south, so the red part. However, I'm wearing red today and my glasses are red as always because my main team is actually Liverpool. So I grew up as a Wednesday fan going to the games. My dad is a United fan. You'll be happy to hear that. Oh, is he? Well done. Yes. But I kind of disappointed him maybe by going the Wednesday way. So we often had to go to Wednesday during my childhood. But we also went to a few Liverpool games when I was a kid, when Iain Rush was still around back in the day, a long time ago, I know. And obviously now with the current success and the Klopp, I mean, the Klopp, what can you say? Yes, I've got a question. And maybe our listeners will have to a Wednesday fan as Mittwoch. That's the Sheffield Wednesday. There are two teams in Sheffield. There's Sheffield Wednesday. They're called Sheffield Wednesday and Sheffield United. And I'm a United fan. And so he's a Wednesday fan. Yeah. Not because they play on Wednesdays or they used to play on Wednesdays. Well, they do sometimes. The other interesting point about Sheffield that a lot of people don't know is that the oldest football club in the world comes from Sheffield. And a lot of people will be arguing about that because there are discussions, but it is a fact. So Sheffield FC, which is not either United or Wednesday, but a very small team, is officially the oldest club in the world. But just to trump you there a bit, Dave, Bramall Lane, the home of Sheffield United, is the oldest football ground in the world. There you go. Very, very good. Very good. But before we talk further, we have to talk about football, the word itself. Because people tell me it's soccer, isn't it? And I say, no, in England, it's football. Absolutely. Yeah. But Dave, we were talking before, there are different types of football around the world in the English speaking world, right? Absolutely. What is it? What do you want to call it? Soccer or football? If you go to the States and you're in the States, of course, they say football, but they mean American football for us Europeans or football, normal English football fans. And they would, of course, say soccer. Then we had the discussion about Ireland. And I know that your husband is Irish, Rebecca. So I know that, for example, in Ireland, they also have Gaelic football. Yes. And maybe some Irish people maybe call that the football, maybe some may call it soccer. In Australia, then they have Aussie rules of football. Again, I think the Australians tend more to talk about soccer if they're talking about... Our version. Our version of football. Yeah. So also their national team is called the Socceroos, which is maybe where it comes from as well. Have you watched Gaelic football a little bit, Rebecca? I love it. OK, Dave, do you have a German team that you support? You lived in Germany for a long time. Dortmund. Dortmund. Ah, OK. Oh, I think it doesn't approve. Well, that's OK. Better than... I'm not saying what. Yeah, but... Like the Tod Norden, I think, yeah? Yes. So why did you support Dortmund? Because you lived nearby or you just liked the team? Yeah, I lived in a place called Hagen for a while. Half of them were Schalke and half of them are Dortmund. Until this day, guys, I've never really understood. Obviously, if you come from Schalke, then you're probably a Schalke fan or Gelsenkirchen. Obviously, if you come from near Dortmund, you're a Dortmund fan. That's quite clear. But wherever else, who is what? It is just absolutely... How you decide. That's also Bochum, isn't it? Oh yeah, Bochum. Yes, true. How do you know whether they're Dortmund or Schalke? You don't. Incredible. That's one thing I have to say is watching the Bundesliga. And I do love when they show the Dortmund stadium. They have the van, doesn't it? The Dortmunder van of fans. And this is something we were talking about, that you don't have standing seats. There's no standing areas in England anymore. They got rid of all standing due to security reasons. So you can stand at your seat, but everybody has a seat in England. So that is a big difference when you go to a Premier League game. There is no standing. I have to say, here, I'm an Eintracht fan. I live 15 minutes from the Frankfurt Eintracht Stadium. And if you go there, and I've never actually been in the standing area, but even if you're next to it and they start jumping around, the whole building shakes. It's crazy. But I have to say the atmosphere is very special when you have a standing area. But would that atmosphere feeling be very similar to England stadiums? Or is there any difference? Could you tell the craziness of fans? Yeah, it depends. There are differences. So, for example, the beer thing. So in Germany, you can drink beer. You can't do that in England. You can't? No, you have to go out to the stands to drink beer. Oh, no. Yeah, that's a bit annoying. You have to drink before, in between and after. Exactly. Yeah. So everybody charges out in half time to drink. And that's why a lot of people meet before and drink a lot before the game, because you can't drink during the game. I kind of like the fact that in Germany you can just have a beer and it's plastic cups anyway. So, I mean, what's the problem, really? And can I just add something to the beer drinking? Because English people drink a lot of beer. I just recently learned, I didn't know that because obviously I didn't hang out with beer drinking groups when I was in England. When you go out and you're like five people and one person gives a round. Oh, yeah. So then it's absolutely mandatory that everybody needs to give a round. So you can't live before. So you have to have five drinks, yeah. After the five drinks, if the next or the first one starts again. So that's ending out with then. I didn't know that. And that maybe explains why this heavy drinking, if that's a rule. It is a rule. If you're in the round, you have to buy a round. Sometimes if I'm with my husband and his friends in Ireland, the Irish are incredibly generous, friendly people. And we go out and they're doing rounds and there's like, I don't know, there's like seven of them. And they're like, oh, you're in the round, you're in the round. I'm like, oh no, can I miss this one? Can I miss this? And I've got like 10 drinks, you know, and I'm trying to like catch up because they're all drinking really quickly and I can't keep up. And I've got them lined up on the bar and I'm like, no, I don't need to be in the shot. They buy you one anyway. They buy one anyway. You can't say I'm out, I'm out. No, you can try, but no, it doesn't work. Well, interesting. Any other vocab or untrusting? Yeah, I think you wanted to say about the scoring that people get it wrong, Germans. I have to say this comes up a lot, how to say the scoring. So generally we don't use the two. If they won, they won 5-1, for example. You don't say 5-2-1. We wouldn't say that. Germans often make that mistake. A draw as well. We don't use the three. You would say 3-3. They drew 3-3 or they drew 3-all. I think 3-all is more common than 3-3 really, but yeah, you'd say 3-all. And they drew. Unentschieden drew. And this is a bit tricky to explain. Even if the home game, so it's Frankfurt home game, and as they did, they beat Bayern 5-1. But for example, if they lost, Frankfurt was 1 and I don't know, Bochum was 2, you would say Frankfurt lost 2-1, even though it was a home game for Frankfurt. So when it's written, it would always have the home team first. So you would have the 1 and then the 2. But as you say it. If you say it, you always say the higher number first. You would never say Frankfurt lost 1-2 or 1-2. Frankfurt lost 2-1 to Dortmund or whoever it was. Yeah. Bayern lost 5-1. That's one of my favourites. That was back in December. Bayern lost 5-1 to Frankfurt, for example, which is a bit confusing sometimes, I think. And they don't usually say 0, do they? I mean, we say 5-0 or something. Exactly. In football, it's always 0. It's not 0. That's a good point. Yeah. While you're talking about the score, high scores, there's all these beautiful English words like thrashed and hammered. And this is good. Eintracht hammered Bayern. And there's all these wonderful words for beating and something. But we were also talking about some nice words that have moved over into sort of everyday life. It's not always about football, Dave. You had a list of some nice ones, didn't you? Yeah, absolutely. Like starting at the beginning, you've got the kickoff. Right. So we talk about a meeting. Kickoff meeting. Kickoff meeting. Like a hat-trick, of course. Like three of anything. Red card. Pitches, of course. I'm not sure, actually, if that comes also a little bit from the American, from the baseball, when they throw the ball. I think it does, yeah. To pitch. As well. But to pitch, like when a presentation, product presentation, of course, is the word penalty. Right. So if you've done something wrong, you get like a final penalty or something like that. And then a couple of others, quite nice ones. Firstly, to tackle, when you try and get the ball off somebody else. Also in rugby or other sports as well. And then, of course, how you deal with a situation. So to tackle a problem. That's a good one. Finally, to draw, which you just talked about, actually, earlier on. Also, maybe in negotiations, there was a draw. There was no winner, if you want to talk in that way as well. So there's lots of words that actually come out of the football sphere into normal. Yeah, business English even. Absolutely. So as we are in the Euros, or we're coming up to the Euros, just another bit of vocabulary. Talking about the Achtelfinal, I always get asked, we don't have a word for this. We just call it the last 16, right? So we have quarterfinals. And then the Halbfinal is the semis. It's not the half final. I hear that quite a lot. So it's the semis and then the final. But we don't have an Achtel. We have a last 16, which sounds a bit boring, actually. I think it'd be nice if we had a word for that. No, no, no. We don't. And the winner gets the Pokal. The Pokal. The Pokal. That sounds very painful. It does, actually, doesn't it? The winner gets the Pokal. There was one on television. I don't know in what show, but he said the Pokal. Oh, really? It went viral, yeah. It wasn't Lothar, was it? Lothar Matthäus is my favorite example of someone with... I love this guy because his English is... Should I be saying this? I don't know. It's pretty terrible. But it's authentic, isn't it? But he's so authentic. He goes on international television, international TV, talking about football because that's his expertise, of course. And he doesn't care. He just gets on with it. And I think that's a great example of, like, you know your subject. You don't have to have perfect grammar. Just go and do your thing. Speak like Lothar. Yes. Speak like Lothar. Maybe it was him that said the Pokal. I don't know. But it's not. It's the cup, I think. The winner final cup. But that's actually a very good thing for improving accents, actually. If you ever want to improve your accents in English, various different accents, go and watch something maybe on Sky. If you go to or get something on YouTube from Sky Sports or any of these sports channels. And they often have the interview from the pundits. This is maybe also a good word. The pundits. So these experts that talk about the football games and everything. You often have people from different areas of the country. And often if you, I don't know, maybe it is the guy from Liverpool, Jamie Carragher, or you maybe get the guy from Manchester. So there's always these different people from different areas. And that's a great way just to get an ear into the different English accents. And also Roy Keane. Yeah, I was just going to say Roy Keane. Again, it's just choosing a topic that you're interested in. And I think if you like football, there's so many interviews and things you can watch on our blogs. A lot of video podcasts that people make about football that are really good. And on Klopp as well. There's so many nice YouTube videos when he got something wrong. And that's so funny. Yeah, really. You love him. Yeah, I know. And this is the point. We love him. You know, he's a legend now. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's quite funny that when he went to England, I mean, he wasn't immediately successful at Liverpool. But the Germans really did criticize his English. It was on TV every day. All listen to what Jürgen said. And I thought. Didn't matter. It doesn't matter. Look at him now. And even now, his English is not perfect, but he's perfectly, you know, you can understand him. His English is pretty good, but it doesn't need to be perfect. He hasn't come over to teach people English. No, exactly. He didn't do that. That wasn't his target. I like that. I think that's why people like him because he's just very authentic. He doesn't try to be something he's not. As a Liverpool fan, as I said before, I watched the interview where he, in actual fact, resigned from Liverpool. He said he would retire. Very sad moment, I must say. But there I was watching him. And from an English trainer's perspective, I just had to applaud his English. I mean, he really did do a good job. And some of the phrases that he brought in, absolutely. Very English. Very, very well done. I just had a little smile on my face at some of the things he said. Of course, there were some grammar mistakes here and there, but his English was amazing. And I think he's done a really good job over the years that he's been in England also to pick up that very native English. And I think this, again, it's going back to this authenticity. Be who you are. And the moment, who's the Leverkusen trainer, is it? Alonso. The Spanish guy, right? Alonso, yeah. And who speaks, his German, it's okay, but it's not perfect. But he does often make the effort to speak German, which I think is great. And again, people like that when you try to speak their language. They don't care if it's not perfect. It's more the effort and obviously his expertise. And they don't care about if he mixes up his daddy does. Oh, goodness. No, absolutely not. And then there's also, we spoke about earlier, the stadium songs that are legendary, maybe, or have become legendary. I don't know. I find in England, yeah, they're very creative. Like songs change. They get a new player. And within a week, the fans have created a song about the new player. Haven't they, Dave? It's amazing. And then you hear these songs and you think, wow, they're quite creative. About the players, about training, for example. Exactly. So if there was a new player at Sheffield United and he was interesting or he was good, within a week, the fans will have a song about him. He'll be on some forum somewhere. Or they'll just start singing it and people pick it up. And it's really entertaining. And what they often do is use sort of old songs or older songs that were very popular. For Liverpool, for example, maybe everyone knows Mo Salah. He's a Liverpool player. There was also a song back in the 90s, correct me if I'm wrong. It was called Sit Down by a band called James from Manchester. And they took the song and they made it into the Egyptian King. So they changed the lyrics. And the tune is the same, but they changed the lyrics. And so every time they see Mo Salah, they sing the song. Or every time Mo Salah scores a goal, that's another point, to score a goal, not to shoot a goal. Right. That's a good one to score. Yeah, not a shot a goal. But it's penalty shooting and not penalty shooting. Penalty shootout. That's a good point. Yeah, good point. He scored a penalty. He kind of said he scored a penalty. He scored a penalty, yeah. Do they do the singing? I'm trying to think about Eintracht. I've just tried to think of, well, I don't think there's so many German songs about German players. Because I know my son, he probably knows some English songs about famous players, international players. Of course, they have a chant in the stadium. So the Dusseldorf fans and the Cologne and the Gladbach, they have their own songs. Yeah, they have their songs. Eintracht always sing at the beginning, their classic songs. But I don't think they have them so much about the players. No, I don't think so. If I can just add as well, in the show notes, I'll put a link to a Padlet full of football stuff. And on there, you can also watch a few videos of Liverpool football club videos. With the songs, I mean, of course, the songs. Is that what we need? Absolutely. The Allez, Allez, Allez, for example, the song. And we're all proud that Jürgen is a red. This is another thing. I was like, my brother's a big football fan. And I was asking him, I said, you know, we're doing an episode. What would you say? He's got a season ticket to Sheffield United. And I said, what would you say the difference is between German Bundesliga and Premier League? And he made a good point that in Germany, there's one big team that everybody hates. Whereas in England. Not everybody. The rest of the people in Germany, ABB, anybody but Bayern. But for example, in England, there's a few big teams that people hate. So people love to hate Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal. It's a bit more spread out. Oh, that's nice. The dislike is a bit more spread out. Whereas in Germany, it's very targeted at one team in particular, which I understand because I also don't like Bayern. There's also a north-south divide. Correct me if I'm wrong, Rebecca. In Germany. Oh, in England. I mean, no, you can't support anybody from down there. No, from London. No. What? From down there. Yes. Would you say that's the same in Germany? Is it like north-south? Is there a north-south thing? Not so much. You're very particular about your area, your local positioning. Yeah. Now, have you got a guess for the European Championship? Who's your favourite team? It's England. Every time, guess. I guess. Silly question. I don't think Germany. Sorry. I'm not sure. You never know. They're having a bit of a crisis. Yeah, but this is the thing. They always come good. They always come good. Yeah. Well, they haven't done recently, though. True. They've done fairly badly. Under 17, they won the World Championship. I mean, that was really successful. Yeah. Yeah, right. Who knows? You never know. But, of course, the hope still lives on. We were in the finals last time. We were in the finals against Italy, and the Italians killed it. And have you got a ticket? No, unfortunately not. There were games in Frankfurt, and I don't have a ticket. No, we haven't. So, hopefully, this year, it's coming home and not going to Rome. Because last time... I thought that was so funny when Italy won, and they went, It's coming to Rome, instead of... It's coming home. That's what they told. The guy came and said it into the camera. He went, It's coming to Rome. And I thought that was kind of funny. But, hopefully, this year, it's coming home. Well, a very emotional subject, anyway, for a lot of people. Yes. Something to look forward to the weekend. Yes, absolutely. OK. Thanks for listening today. Apologies again about the microphone problems. Next time, we're going to go back to grammar, and we're going to be talking about future tense. So, all the ways you can talk about the future, different tenses. And so, hopefully, you will be joining us again. Thanks for listening. Thank you so much for pressing play today. If you have any comments, questions, or perhaps suggestions for future episodes, feel free to contact us at our website, 3englishexperts.com. Have a great day, and see you next time.