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In this football language podcast for learners of English we look back at the Euro 2020 group stages and focus on the most and the least from the tournament. 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.
Football Language Podcast: Euro 2020 Group Stage Review – the Most and the Least
DF: Hello everyone, this is Damian, one half of the languagecaster.com team, Damon of course is in Tokyo and I’m based in London and I hope you are all doing well. As regular listeners will know we have been posting lots of football language from the 2020 Euros throughout the tournament and as the group stage has now come to an end we thought we’d take a look back at some of the best and worst of the competition so far. To do this we have used some of the statistics from the UEFA.com page – there will be lots of numbers in this report so listen out for them!
Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Welsh).
Right, there have been 36 matches over the past two weeks and during this period the competition has lost eight of the original 24 sides. So, it’s goodbye to North Macedonia, Finland (the two tournament debutants), Scotland, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Slovakia and many people’s dark horses (including mine!) Turkey. There have also been two sides with 100% records – Italy and England – but what about some of the other numbers and statistics from the first round of matches.
Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in French).
Goals
In these 36 matches 94 goals have been scored but which team has scored the most and which team has scored the fewest? Well, the leading scorers are the Dutch with 8 goals from their three group matches followed by Italy, Belgium and Portugal who all have seven – we can say they have seven apiece or seven each. How about the least amount of number of goals? Well, three sides only managed one goal in their three games and all three of these teams have been eliminated from the tournament: Finland, Scotland and Turkey whose only goal was a consolation goal in the match against Switzerland. Interestingly, England were group winners but only managed to register (or score) twice and this is the lowest ever number or tally for a group winner.
OK so we have looked at the number of goals that a team has scored, how about individual players? Well, top of the Golden Boot table is Portugal striker Ronaldo who has managed to score five times, while five other players are in joint second with three goals each: Dutch captain Wijnaldum, Swedish midfielder Forsberg, Polish striker Lewandowski, Belgian forward Lukaku and Czech Republic striker Patrick Schick who scored that wonder goal against Scotland.
Attempts
Which side do you think had the most shots on goals or attempts? Well, Denmark lead the way with 61 but closely followed by Italy on 60 – it might be an interesting game if these two sides faced each other! Again, the two teams with the fewest attempts on goal are those that have already been knocked out of the competition: Finland with 19 and Hungary with 18 though England, remember they were Group D winners, only managed to have 22 shots on goal and only five of these were on target. As for players, well Polish captain Robert Lewandowski had 12 attempts on goal with four on target followed by Ronaldo who has had 11 attempts and six on target.
Discipline
Which sides were the dirtiest or cleanest teams in the competition? Of course, by this we mean which team gave away the most or the fewest fouls and received the most or fewest yellow and red cards. There have been only two red cards so far in the tournament and only one of these was a straight red, Wales midfielder Nathan Ampadu against Italy. The team that committed the most fouls in the group stages was Turkey with 48 followed by Poland on 46, while the team that gave away the fewest amount of fouls was Wales with only 24. The Polish side, along with North Macedonia, received eight yellow cards, which was the most by any country at the tournament. Five sides received only one yellow card and all of these sides are among the favourites to lift the trophy: England, The Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal and Italy.
Penalties, The Woodwork, Clean Sheets and Own Goals
There have been 12 penalties awarded so far – three of them in the Portugal versus France match. Four of these have been saved with Portugal scoring all three of their spot kicks, which was the most. Which team has hit the woodwork the most? Well, Poland hit the bar and post on four occasions while England and France managed to hit the frame of the goal, the woodwork, three times. How about clean sheets? Well, only two sides have managed to not concede any goals in their three matches: England and Italy. Finally, there have been quite a lot of own goals at this tournament – eight in total – with both Portugal and Slovakia conceding two. You might remember the absolute howler or goalkeeping gaffe from the Slovakian keeper who punched the ball into his own net against Spain.
Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Italian).
Good Bye
DF: Yes, you are listening to languagecaster.com – that message was in Italian. Don’t forget that there’s a transcript to this podcast and lots of vocab support which you can access by coming along to our site. OK, that’s it for this short podcast – we hope you enjoyed our look back at some of the stats from the 2020 Euro group stages and we’ll be back with more football language over the weekend as the last 16 games begin. Don’t forget you can ask any language questions you may have, play in our predictions competition, vote in our Euro 2020 poll and find lots of football language on our site here at languagecaster.com. Enjoy the football and we’ll see you again soon. Bye bye.
More Vocabulary
- Eliminate
- Euro 2020 End of the group stage
- 2020 Euros Day 11: In the balance
- 2020 Euros Day 10: Send a team home
- 2020 Euros Day 9: Frame of the goal
- 2020 Euros Day 8: Sweet Volley
- 2020 Euros Day 7: Hit their stride
- 2020 Euros Day 6: Ballooned over
- 2020 Football Podcast: Patrik Schick’s Goal
Learn English Through Football PodcastDamon Brewster and Damian FitzpatrickLearn English Through Football Podcast: A show for football fans to improve their English language skills
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