Football Shout-out: Fouls

Jack: Hello and welcome to Premier Skills English - Football Shout-out 

Rich: Football shoutout is the series that teaches you the language you need when you’re watching the game.

Jack: Hi everybody my name’s Jack 

Rich: and my name’s Rich and welcome to our new series of football English podcasts where we talk about the English you need when you’re watching football.

Jack: This is our second lesson. If you listened to our first lesson, you will remember this:

Jack: Come on ...

Rich: Shoot ...

Jack: Take a shot...

Jack: Yeah!  

Rich: Woohoo!

Jack: Get in!

Rich: Come on!

Jack: What a goal!

Rich: What a belter.

Jack: What a great time to score.

Rich: We can get back in this.

Jack: Our first lesson was all about the language we use when our team scores a goal. If you haven’t heard the lesson, there is a link on the side of this page for you to go back and listen and learn lots of vocabulary connected to goals. 

Rich: Have you got your breath back, Jack?

Jack: Yes, thanks. Talking about goals involves lots of shouting! 

Rich: All of our football Shout-out lessons are about football phrases you can say to friends while watching the match or shout at the TV screen if you are alone.

Jack: And in this lesson, lesson two in the series, we’re going to talk about fouls - what do you say when one player fouls another player.

Rich: Well, that depends, doesn’t it?

Jack: What does it depend on?

Rich: It depends on whether the player that is fouling is on your team.

Jack: Ah yes, of course. Listen to this:

Rich: Referee! That’s gotta be a pen! It’s a definite penalty!

Jack: A penalty? He never touched him! That’s a dive!

Rich: What’s the ref doing?

Jack: It’s going to VAR. Now we’ll see.

Rich: He’s gotta go! That’s gotta be a red. You can’t fly into a tackle like that. Studs up two-footed … horrible

Jack: What are you talking about? He got the ball. It was a fifty-fifty challenge - hard but fair! He went down way too easily!

Rich: What’s the ref given? It’s a penalty! Get in!
...

Rich: Fouls and penalty decisions are often subjective. You usually get two different views and different language from the two sets of fans.

Jack: Yes, it’s always difficult for the man in the middle - the referee.

Rich: Let’s look at some of the language you heard in the example conversation.

Jack:  What about … that’s gotta be a red. 

Rich: Yeah that’s a good phrase. We use this when we think a player should get a red card. 

Jack: You might also hear ‘That’s gotta be a yellow’ which means the referee should give the player a yellow card, or ‘that’s gotta be a booking’ which means the same thing.

Rich: A more difficult phrase we often hear is ‘he’s gotta go for that’ or ‘he’s gotta walk for that’ which means the player should get a red card.

Jack: We often use gotta here, ‘He’s gotta get a red’ rather than ‘he has got to get a red’ or ‘he must get a red’. 

Rich: And of course, fans scream for penalty kicks all the time. You might hear ‘that’s gotta be a pen!’.

Jack: Pen?

Rich: It’s short for penalty. You could shout ‘that’s a definite pen’ or a more difficult phrase is ‘that’s a stonewall penalty’.

Jack: A stonewall is a type of wall you find in the countryside. They are very clear and you can see them for miles, so a stonewall penalty is a very, very clear penalty when the foul is really obvious. I don’t think we use stonewall as an adjective in many other situations.

Rich: No, we just say stonewall penalty. But, remember this all changes when it’s your player doing the fouling.

Jack: One common phrase you might use is ‘he never touched him’. This phrase will still be used by fans even if it was a two-footed flying ninja type tackle at a player’s head.

Rich: Or maybe if you’re feeling generous you will change it to ‘he hardly touched him’!

Jack: Fans will also accuse opposition players of diving - pretending they have been fouled and falling to the ground. ‘That’s a dive’ is a common phrase to shout at the television.

Rich: This is sometimes changed to ‘that’s a blatant dive’. Blatant again means really obvious.

Jack: Or another common phrase is ‘he went down far too easily’ or ‘he went to ground too easily’.

Rich: I have a really strange phrase that I think is funny. It’s ‘he went down like a sack of spuds’. This means he dived … he fell to the ground very easily. A sack is a bag and a spud is a potato. He went down like a sack of potatoes … he went down like a bag of spuds. Silly really but I like it.

Jack: Some other phrases you might want to use when your player fouls are ‘it was a fifty-fifty ball’, ‘he won the ball’ and ‘hard but fair’. All of these are phrases we use to say our player shouldn’t be penalised or punished.

Rich: We’ll look at these phrases and a few more in the lesson which you can find below this podcast.

Rich: Listen again. Do you understand everything now? 

Rich: Ref! That’s gotta be a pen! It’s a definite penalty!

Jack: A penalty? He never touched him! That’s a dive!

Rich: What’s the ref doing?

Jack: It’s going to VAR. Now we’ll see.

Rich: He’s gotta go! That’s gotta be a red. You can’t fly into a tackle like that. Studs up two-footed … horrible

Jack: What are you talking about? He got the ball. It was a fifty-fifty challenge - hard but fair! He went down way too easily!

Rich: What’s the ref given? It’s a penalty! Get in!

Jack: So, that’s how you talk about fouls in English. 

Rich: We’ve got some activities to help you remember the phrases that we’ve been speaking about in the lesson below this podcast.

Jack: We’ll be back soon with our next football English lesson, which focuses on how we talk about the opposition.

Rich: Bye for now and enjoy your football.