You're listening to the Footglitch Podcast.
Love football, learn English.
How many shots on goal did the Scottish have in their opening game against the hosts from Germany?
Did the holders manage to beat Albania despite a shocking start to the game?
How did the Poles do against the Dutch?
And what do you know about the word performance?
Hello Footglitchers, the listeners of the Footglitch Podcast.
Welcome to another episode.
My name is Denik Lucas and I'm an English teacher.
And this is my podcast about football.
I hope you like the podcast by the way.
It's new. It's still a bit rough around the edges.
Yeah, I still need to find the right way to do it.
Some of the episodes are interviews.
Some of them I'm recording solo like this one.
And obviously when you start with a new project like this with a new podcast,
it's absolutely crucial that you get some feedback immediately.
So I need you guys to tell me what you think if you like this.
And you know, obviously if I see that people keep listening because I can see the numbers.
Yeah, I can see the number of plays and downloads in my analytics.
If I see that people like it, well, it will motivate me to keep producing more episodes for you.
Anyway, the European Championship 2024 in Germany is in full swing.
And we have already had five matches.
We have seen some nice goals, some excellent performances,
some individual and team performances that are worth mentioning.
Some less good performances as well.
But what I would say is that we haven't seen many upsets yet.
Yeah, not any surprises at all in my opinion.
And we are still yet to see at least one surprise.
We have also had an incident, unfortunately, that happened today in Hamburg.
A maniac with an axe and pickaxe wielding maniac.
He also had a Molotov cocktail on him, apparently was shot by the German police
because he had threatened the fans apparently.
That happened at a fan parade.
So I have to say that I wish we didn't have to hear about stories like that.
And hopefully, hopefully we will not anymore.
And it's good that the German police managed to deal with this so quickly and effectively.
I'm actually pretty glad about that.
But we are here to talk about football, of course.
So let me give you my thoughts on those five matches.
I did not see them all, but those matches that I did not see, I saw the highlights.
So the first match of the tournament, the opening game was Germany against Scotland.
And well, it was kind of written in stars what would happen in this game.
The Germans, they were really excited about the tournament starting and they absolutely thrashed the Scots.
Not a chance for the Scottish.
When I say not a chance, they actually did not have a single shot on goal.
Yeah, they did manage to score a goal.
It was a consolation goal.
It was Anthony Rudiger who actually put the goal into his own net.
So the Scottish didn't even have a shot on goal.
Like I said, Germans looked like a well-oiled machine.
Are you really surprised?
I'm not, to be honest.
Some excellent performances from the Germans.
It was a great team performance as well.
Florian Wirth, the German wonder kid who plays for Bayer Leverkusen,
scored the opener that happened pretty quickly.
Was it like 10th or 11th minute or something along those lines that took the pressure of the Germans?
And they absolutely dominated the pitch.
Then at the end of the first half, a Scottish player was sent off.
So that made things even worse for the Scots.
They were down to 10 men and paradoxically, they played much better in the second half.
Yeah, because I think half time it was 3-0.
And then in the second half, like I said, they scored a goal.
And for a long time, the Germans couldn't score the fifth goal.
So it looked like that half was going to end 1-1 actually.
But in the end, 5-1.
Yeah, I was a bit disappointed by what the Scottish players showed.
I don't think it was brave at all.
And we remember them beating Spain in their qualification group.
They are the reason why we don't see Erling Haaland,
because Scotland finished above Norway in their qualification group.
So considering all this, this was disappointing by Scotland.
But, you know, what I will say, another thing I will say is that such a heavy defeat
is a massive blow to Scottish chances of progressing from their group.
Because if you have to lose in this system, you better not lose by a large margin.
Because now the Scottish kind of have to win both their games really.
So it's not an easy position to be in.
The next game was on Saturday.
Hungary got beaten by Switzerland 1-3.
And it seemed like a comfortable win for the Swiss.
I did watch this one and I like the headline that I saw in the Czech media after the game
saying that the Hungarians had goulash in their defense.
Goulash is a national dish of Hungarians, I believe.
And well, basically this is making fun of that a little bit.
But also in the Czech language, when we say there's goulash, it means chaos.
So yeah, it was a little bit like that.
The Swiss were better organized and they absolutely deserved this win.
Then later on, Croatia-Spain, that seemed like a really game that people would look
forward to, right?
Both teams tend to do really well in the tournaments.
And well, I would say it delivered to a point, although Croatia didn't score a goal in this
game, which was slightly disappointing.
Spain won it 3-0.
I did not watch this game, so I only saw the highlights.
But the takeaways from this game, one of the takeaways was Jamal.
Jamal is a 16-year-old player playing for Spain.
He became the youngest player to set up a goal.
It was that third goal scored by Dani Carvajal, a Real Madrid player.
And Jamal, honestly, 16 years of age playing at such a high-profile tournament, this kid
is amazing.
And he has a bright future ahead of him.
And his assist was an excellent cross, really a well-bent cross into the six-yard box.
An excellent moment for the youngster.
And then there was, yeah, I should mention that Morata, I believe, scored the first goal.
Alvaro Morata, the Atletico Madrid player, who often is criticized by the media in Spain,
but he keeps scoring goals.
So if you score goals, you know, I think you justify your position in the team.
Then when it was 3-0, there was a controversial moment that had to be dealt with by VAR.
Basically, there was a mistake by the Spanish goalkeeper.
And Petkovic was fouled by Rodri.
And it looks like it might have been a red, but Rodri was only showed a yellow card for
that.
I later watched an Instagram post by a referee.
I follow one referee who explains these moments.
And that referee was saying that it's fine.
This is fine as a yellow.
I don't think I understand it enough.
For me, it was a clear red.
But anyway, the referee Mark Oliver pointed to the penalty point and then Petkovic himself
took the penalty, but he missed it.
Then it came back to him.
It bounced back to him and he scored.
But this goal was disallowed by VAR.
And that's because there was apparently encroachment.
I thought it was actually quite harsh, this on the Croatians.
Encroachment, by the way, if you don't know what encroachment is, is basically when the
players run into the box before the penalty taker even touches the ball.
And apparently the Croatians, it was shown by VAR.
It was really just by a small margin.
So it's surprising that this goal was chalked off.
But it is what it is.
I believe the Spanish deserve their win.
Even though if you look at the stats, based on the stats, it looked like an even game.
But I think the Spanish had the game under control.
I didn't watch it, as I said, but I think when you have a comfortable lead, this is
often what happens.
So basically the Spanish saw the game out in a comfortable way, I think.
Right.
Then there was a game, Italy, Albania, a very interesting game.
Albania, I have to mention this, won their qualification group.
They finished above the Czechs.
So we remember Albanians and we got only one point from our two games against Albania,
I believe.
So very tough opponent.
They are a small country, a small nation.
But I have to tell you something.
They have some excellent players playing in the Serie A.
And in this game against Italy, they were not given many chances.
I think it was the fact that they had these experienced players playing in Serie A.
I think it gave them at least some hope in that game.
And the way the game started, I don't think anybody expected really, because Italy had
basically, Italy had a throw-in and it was in their own half.
I don't know who it was, but a player threw the ball towards their own goal.
It looked like a comfortable position, but the defender did not control the ball at all.
He actually hesitated.
And then an Albanian player, I can't remember the name, but he took advantage of that and
scored a brilliant goal.
And it was also the fastest goal, I believe, of all time of the Euros in history.
It was really quick goal.
Something like 20, 23 seconds, something like that.
So 1-0 for Albania, but Italy equalized pretty fast.
It was in the 11th minute and then they took the lead in the 16th minute.
And they did deserve to win overall.
It wasn't an impressive performance by the Italians, but they know what they were doing.
And what I will say is here for me, that's the difference.
If Albania lost by only one goal, that gives them a decent chance to still qualify.
Because compared to Scotland, their score will not be so bad.
So I think Albania still haven't said their last word in this tournament.
Then I saw the game Poland, the Netherlands.
And Poland started off really well.
They scored a good goal from corner.
Adam Buksa's header, but the Dutch equalized with a deflected shot.
It was Cody Gappo.
And basically he was the player that got into a lot of promising opportunities in that game.
And he missed a lot of chances, I would say.
Some of them were real sitters.
The Dutch had so many chances in this game.
They were the better side, in my opinion.
They had more possession as expected.
But I would also add that Poland didn't play badly at all, because it was expected, right?
Poland obviously knew what they had to do.
And they played good counter-attacking football.
And they put on a heroic defensive display, in my opinion.
Some of their defenders played incredibly well.
And their keeper as well, Bojtjes Chasny, of course.
And they had a few chances as well.
They could have really won this game, or at least they could have equalized or something.
But in the end, it was that guy again, Kurt Weghorst.
He had scored that amazing goal in the World Cup against Argentina.
Remember, was it the semis?
I think it was the semis in Qatar in the 110th minute.
And this super sub delivered again, two minutes after he was brought on by the Dutch manager
Ronald Koeman.
He scored the winner.
It was about 10 minutes till the end of the game, I think.
And yeah, great three points.
Great three points for the Netherlands.
Not so good for Poland, I think.
Again, they only lost by one goal, so it's not the worst.
But the problem is that their next opponents are France and Austria.
So it will be a bit hard against France.
We never really know.
It's football.
I'm just saying Poland are in a tough, tough group.
But I think overall this was a good match.
This was an interesting match full of great performances and enjoyable to watch for sure.
Yeah, and one more thing I would like to mention.
There's a story doing rounds now because of a chant, a chant made by the English fans.
It's some sort of children's song that the English fans sing to provoke the Germans.
It's like they are mocking them because it's something to do with the Second World War,
basically.
The song is about 10 German bombers.
And that basically makes fun of the German casualties in the Second World War.
Now while I understand why something like this is part of the UK's folklore, because
the war really happened and what Germans did was terrible and they deserved that.
And of course you want to celebrate your heroes in the war.
But what I will say is that now it seems really unnecessary.
But you know, this is the English humor.
Sometimes they just take the piss.
Unfortunately though, this is a very sensitive topic in Germany.
And UEFA has warned England that their fans might have their tickets confiscated if they
carry on in this fashion.
So watch this space.
Hopefully the English fans won't keep singing this, but I doubt anything will change really.
But either way, this is something I wanted to mention.
Okay, as an English teacher, I have to live up to the expectations and actually teach
you something here.
So let's take a look at the word performance.
I have heard many people mispronounce this word.
First of all, be careful about the stress placement.
The second syllable is stressed in this word.
So it's not performance.
It's performance.
Performance.
The form is stressed.
So pronounce it with more strength and prominence.
And what we should talk about here is also the collocations, the words that are used
before this word performance.
So let's talk about the verbs first.
I think the most common verb is give probably, to give a performance, to give a good performance.
But if you want to sound more fancy, you could go for one of those two phraser verbs, either
put in or put on, to put in a good performance, to put on a good performance.
I think I used it in this episode, for example.
But if you want to use a more formal word, then you can use the verb to produce or deliver
or display, yeah, to produce a good performance, to deliver an excellent performance, to display
a poor performance.
Speaking of the adjectives you could use here.
So if you want to praise the team, you can say they put in an excellent or great or impressive
or outstanding or even stellar performance, right?
If you want to sound less strong, then you can say good, decent, to put in a decent,
solid performance.
OK?
If you want to be more negative, then you can say the team have given a poor or disappointing
or lackluster performance.
And then you could also use words like dominant or memorable.
Obviously, there is a lot of freedom there, a lot of flexibility as well.
OK, if you want to avoid using the word performance, which by the way is a countable noun, yeah,
one performance, two performances, if you want to avoid using the noun, then you can
use this word as a verb to perform.
The team performed really well, the team performed poorly, the team performed badly.
And if you want to avoid the word perform completely, then you can say the team played
well or they did really well or badly.
OK, that's it for today.
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Bye bye.