2018 World Cup Football Language: Hat-trick & Brace

Football Language: Hat-trick & Brace

Scoring goals is what football is all about. If you can’t score, you can’t win. It is fairly unusual for a player to score more than one goal in one match. If a player scores two, we can say he or she scored a brace. So, in Portugal v Spain, Diego Costa scored a brace for Spain. There was a great individual strike for his first and a poacher’s goal for his second. Scoring three goals is very special, and has the special phrase a hat-trick. In the same match, Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo scored three goals. He scored a hat-trick withA a penalty, a drive from outside the box that was fumbled by the goalkeeper and a stunning free kick. But what about if someone scores four or more. In this case, you could use the phrase a hatful.A However,A  this is usually used for teams that score four or more, as it is very unusual for a single player to do this. So, a brace, a hat-trick and a hatful. The language of scoring lots of goals!

Example: A hat-trick from Ronaldo, a brace from Diego Costa and a cracker from Nacho saw Spain and Portugal play out a world class game at the World Cup in Russia. (AS 15 June 2018)