You're listening to the Footglitch Podcast. Love football, learn English.
Hello and welcome to the Footglitch Podcast. This is a brand new podcast about football
and English. And in this episode zero, I would like to introduce myself to you and also the
concept of this show. So first of all, my name is Zdenek and my full name is Zdenek
Lukas and I'm from the Czech Republic. Some people call it Czechia these days as well.
So Czechia or Czech Republic. And I used to play football, not at a very professional
level, but I really enjoyed it a lot. Now, I'm also an English teacher, a professional
one. I have a master's degree in English teaching and I have taught English in four different
countries, including the United Kingdom and recently also Vietnam. My favorite way to
teach my students is through a conversation about football. I believe that if you share
your passion with someone, you can make great connections and as a result, you learn much
faster than you would normally learn in the traditional way with a textbook or, you know,
with a lot of grammatical exercises. So let's say this is kind of my way. And I've always
toyed with the idea of tying or uniting English and football, connecting these two subjects,
English and football. You know, for example, my master's thesis, which I wrote at university
in my final year, is about analyzing the language of English football commentators. So as you
can see, I've always been kind of crazy about trying to connect English and football. So
I thought since now I have about four clients, one to one students with whom I speak English
about football, only that that's all we do in our lessons. And I have to say, these are
my favorite lessons. I thought I might as well just start a new podcast. This is not
my first podcast, by the way, I also have Zdenek's English podcast, which is another
English podcast. So I thought, OK, let's start something new. Let's see how it goes. So hopefully
it will go well and you like it. And the plan on this podcast is to talk about football,
of course. Now that is the Czech national team, Czech football, but also the Premier
League, which is my favorite league at the moment. I could also occasionally talk about
other leagues as well, European leagues mainly. And I'm planning to have episodes in which
I have some guests on as well. And these could be football fans, people from the football
field, let's say of different teams. It could be international teams. It could be club football,
anything really. I think this this podcast will have a lot of flexibility in terms of
what I can do on it. But the idea is I'll be talking about football so you can if you
are an English learner, you can develop your listening skills. Right. And hopefully this
will help you with your confidence, with your vocabulary as well, and ultimately your fluency
too. Also, because I'm a teacher, you see, I can't just have a chat about football or
just interview someone without trying to teach something. Right. I'm a teacher. I'm an English
teacher. So I might as well attempt to teach some things too. Mostly it's going to be vocabulary,
whether it's words, fixed phrases, idioms, a lot of different things. It could be football
related stuff, but also something people can use outside football. So even if you're not
interested in football, you may actually learn something useful here. Hopefully that is the
idea anyway. And when I have more listeners, because obviously this is a new podcast, so
I'm going to start with five, ten listeners, mostly my friends or people who listen to
my other podcast. So when I do have more listeners, I will start publishing extra podcasts for
subscribers. So basically people who decide to support me and this podcast and they get
extra episodes in return. And in these episodes, I would or I will teach vocabulary, grammar,
pronunciation, anything that I find interesting and useful. So since this is the first episode,
episode zero, the pilot episode, I might as well show you what I can do. So let's keep
it simple, though. Let's talk about football. As you know, football is the sport, right?
Everybody knows that. But it can also be the ball, the actual ball. Yes, that's right.
You refer to the ball as football in English. So that's something a lot of people don't
realize just like a volleyball would be a ball that is used for volleyball, right? Yeah,
it makes sense. So obviously in the USA and possibly in some other countries too, they
don't call it football because you see they have American football. That's why they came
up with another word for it soccer. So it's possible that some of you listening to this
use that term more than football. European people mostly are going to use the word football.
That's for sure, especially in the UK. Nobody's going to say soccer. They're actually going
to laugh at that word. So I'm basically showing you another way you can say the word
football. You can say soccer. But then there is a short version of football. It's like
kind of a slang term that people in the UK use sometimes. And that's footy. Just footy.
I'm going to watch some footy this weekend. Or what are you up to? Well, just some footy
and stuff. Yeah, footy. And then you've got words that you have got some expressions like
a kickabout, for example. A kickabout is just not such a serious match. It's just you go
with a couple of friends outside, maybe build your goals from bags or anything available
basically. And you play on grass anywhere. Sometimes it's not even grass. And it's called
a kickabout. Sometimes you don't even have even sides, maybe five against four, something
like that. It's just not a serious match. You just play with friends. And then when
it gets dark, wrap it up. And then of course there are some other expressions like five
aside, six aside, which means you've got some matches where on each side there are five
players. And six aside would be six players. Obviously the football as we know it, it's
going to be 11 aside, right? 11 players, including a goalkeeper on each side. Sometimes there
is a referee as well, obviously, when it's professionally done. And when it's at the
top level, you also have VAR, video assistant referee. So we're definitely going to talk
about this topic on this podcast in the future. Okay, so that's pretty much all I wanted to
talk about today. I wanted to introduce myself. I wanted to tell you about this podcast. And
I wanted to kind of show you how I may teach on this podcast. So hopefully you liked it.
If you did, please make sure you share this with your friends. It's absolutely crucial
for the success of this podcast and for my motivation as well indeed. Because if I see
people respond positively, if there is positive feedback, then I'm going to keep producing
more and more episodes because I see there is demand for it. Okay, we will see what happens,
but I'm going to speak to you soon. Until next time. Bye.