You're listening to the Footglitch Podcast.
Love football, learn English.
Who is to blame for the bizarre own goal the Turkish team conceded against Portugal?
How are the Turks most likely to play in the game against the Czech Republic?
What could be a good strategy for the Czechs in this game?
And what does the word screamer mean?
Hello, welcome back to the Footglitch Podcast, an English learning podcast about football.
And we are discussing Euro 2024.
And there's one game left in the group stage.
Only one game left, would you believe it?
Next Wednesday, my team, Czechia, faces Turkey.
So this time I've decided to invite a Turkish fan.
And he also is my former student, in fact.
His name is Boran. Hi Boran, welcome to the Footglitch Podcast.
How are you?
Hi Zdeněk, I'm good. How about you?
I'm great. It's a great chance to have you here on this podcast because I always wanted to have a Turkish fan on it.
Since we are in the same group, the Czech Republic and Turkey.
Yeah, thanks for the invite as well. It's good to be here.
And I want to talk about the games as well.
Yeah, yeah, perfect.
So the next game is Turkey, Czech Republic, or is it Turkey, yeah, Czech Republic.
Which one is it?
I mean, we can say that it's pretty much the same thing, but the country's name just had gone under rebranding, let's say.
So there's no significant difference between one or the other.
It always used to be Turkey. But now these days I see even in international football in the English language, they use Turkey.
Just like the Czech Republic has been replaced with Czechia.
So it seems like this is a trend and more countries are going through this.
Yeah, maybe they chose it because of like to seem a bit more authentic, let's say, instead of just using the English one equivalent.
OK, but a more important question is, are you following the Euros?
Yeah, I'm following it as a football fan.
Of course, I know you are a football fan. You are actually currently based in Torino.
That's where you're studying at university, right?
Yeah, right. And if you know Torino, you must have heard about Juventus.
I must have heard about what?
Juventus.
No, never heard of Juventus.
No?
No, no, no. No, obviously.
Yeah, that's a that's a of course well known team.
And of course, you're watching the Turkish games and any other games you've seen?
Pretty much all of it.
Who does it remind me of?
I guess myself.
All right. So Boran, your last game was against Portugal, which you lost 3-0.
Which is a bit of a letdown after the three points from your opening game against Georgia, where you beat them 3-1.
Now Portugal was obviously a tougher, tougher opponent.
So how did you see this game?
I mean, the first game was great in all terms.
Like we started well, even though we conceded one, we just bounced back well and won the game.
But in the Portugal game, they were clearly better than us.
So we can relate to that as well.
The Czech Republic, you know, we were only beaten 2-1, but we thoroughly deserved to lose that game.
So, yeah, they are a different animal.
The Portuguese, I think, clearly, especially like there are some talent from Italy as well.
I'm playing in that Portuguese team.
If you know Rafael Leo, he's a good winger.
Like in his day, he can smash everybody going down from that wing.
Yeah, it's overall the team is just so well balanced.
And it's everybody just mentions Cristiano Ronaldo, but he must be he might be the weakest link there even.
You know, we have so many good players there.
But anyway, 3-0.
I have to tell you, I have to admit that I did not see the game.
And that's because the Czech Republic, Georgia game, which, of course, you can imagine was more important for me, preceded your game.
And after that, how to put it, I had to recover.
I had to recover because that was very nail biting.
And I almost had a heart attack at the end of the game where we almost lost it.
So I had to have a few beers and I had to recover from that.
So I didn't see what exactly happened.
But then I watched the highlights and you have to explain to me what happened with that second goal that Portugal scored.
Oh, wait a minute. Was it that you scored?
Clearly. I mean, if you're passing the ball to your keeper, you should look at the goal.
That's basics.
And I think the reason is like since our coach, he changes the first 11 so frequently.
You lost the chemistry between the players.
That might be a huge reason for that own goal.
Yeah, but that own goal, that was like a circus move.
I don't know how to describe it.
It's one of those that you would put on YouTube and it would get millions of views and it would go viral because it was just so comical.
So basically your defender had as much time as he could imagine.
Like there was no one around and he was passing it back to your keeper. Can you give me the names?
The defenders, Samet and the keeper is Altay, who is a keeper of Manchester United as well.
Right, right. So it was like I thought it was quite a decent pass.
Like you're right that probably shouldn't be directed at the goal.
But still, I thought it was quite slow. The ball was quite slow.
But the keeper wasn't just there. It wasn't in the path of that pass at all.
And then somehow it was going to the goal.
And then the second part of this was that both the defender and the goalkeeper were trying to chase the ball.
And there was like a sliding attempt, last second clearance attempt, which failed.
And the ball went past the goal line and must have been a sucker punch for you.
Yeah, up to that point, I mean, we were watching the game with my friends up to that second goal.
It was OK, because like if he comes from Portuguese, it's OK up to certain point.
But when you can see it's such a goal, such a long goal, let's say it's bad.
Yeah. Do you think it could have some sort of impact on your team, on particularly these players,
but also on the confidence of the whole team? Or do you think they will shake it off quickly?
For the next game? Yeah, I believe that we will shake it off.
Because I mean, in this group, the Portuguese side is the best team.
So like far away from the other three. So I don't know.
So since the defender who considered the own goal won't be playing in the next game as well,
I think it will just be OK to a certain degree. I see.
Well, there are so many goals, so many own goals at this tournament, by the way.
They have they have been showing this meme with like statistics of who the top top goal scorers of the tournament are so far.
And the person at the top is his name is own goal, followed by Lukaku's three disallowed goals by VAR.
And then there are some players who scored two goals.
Yeah, so we have got center defender who also scored an own goal and he was responsible for a penalty.
So he is he has got a bit of bad luck, too. His name is Robin Hranac. He's a very young, young player.
He's playing quite well, but he's been very unlucky so far.
So what else can I ask you about? I suppose the third goal was interesting as well, because Cristiano Ronaldo went on the goalkeeper.
It was just Cristiano Ronaldo and Bruno Fernandes to his left.
And everybody expected Ronaldo to to to shoot. But for some reason, he decided to pass the ball.
What did you think of that? At first, I thought, oh, he was going to score.
It's himself. But then he passed the ball.
So I think it was a kind of a reasonable choice because Fernandes, he was.
Available by so far, and there was no pressure on him whatsoever.
I agree. I totally agree.
I'm just I'm just surprised it happened because we all expect Ronaldo to be a little bit selfish as well,
like because he's chasing all his records and all that.
And he seems to be playing for the team, actually.
I think he thinks about he thinks about winning the Cup instead of just scoring goals this time.
Yeah, I think that's a good sign.
That's a good sign for the Portuguese team. They might win it if this is what's happening there.
You know, because we always think, oh, Ronaldo, like what happened that united with him, right?
Oh, he's going to just disrupt the balance in the team and everything has to be about him.
But maybe not this time. Maybe he's a team player.
I mean, it's up to him because he's the oldest one, I guess.
And that's good. Or let's say the most experienced one.
I think they also have Pepe. Yeah, it's natural for him to step up in this moment
and just try to build the chemistry and sent a national team, because if you look at it,
there are just five or six games to the final in total, maybe.
So it's a good responsible move to do. Yeah, fair enough.
OK, let's talk more about the Turkish team. So who has been playing well so far?
I mean, we can say, can I yield this? If you ever heard of him, he's playing for UN2 as well.
And the Yilmaz in the center forward position.
I can say Çalhanoğlu is playing well. So some say he's good and he's playing well for the team.
But I can't see it. If you go back to that Georgia match, you scored some fantastic goals as well.
They were real screamers. So that was. Yeah.
And also the youngster, Arda Guler, playing for Real Madrid. He's a talented kid.
So I think if we say, I would say just four or three names in total.
And who would be the real danger man, someone we should really mark if I could pass this information onto the Czech team?
Don't worry, it's not going to happen. I don't have such contacts in the team.
But, you know, let's just play that role. Who would you pick as the danger man?
If I have to say just one name, definitely Arda Guler. He's the man.
You might want to, you know, mark Çalhanoğlu or Yildiz. But Guler is unstoppable.
If he takes the ball close to the penalty shooter or just a bit behind to go that position from like 30 yards, 40 yards, he can score.
Oh my God. Yeah, you saw in the Georgia game.
We have to keep him at bay then. We might have to prevent the Turkish players to cross the halfway line then.
That might be the way to go in this game. So how do you think the game will be played?
What do you expect from this game? So it's played on Wednesday.
So we are recording this podcast on Sunday. So what do you think will happen?
I think you guys will be defending site.
Probably, yeah.
And we'll be like try to do much counter attacks.
You will just, I think you will try to catch us in the break most of the time.
And you might succeed in most of the positions, I guess. And might score it one or two.
I think we will try to take the ball. If our center to midfielders play Guler and Celhanoglu, we will try to take the ball.
And try to score an early goal in the first 20 to 30 minutes.
If we score then I think we get a high probability to win the game by one or two, maybe three difference.
If you guys score first then it's difficult for us to win the game.
We might get a draw but after that if we concede first then it's difficult for us.
I don't know what will happen in this game. It's hard for me to call it because I think it's quite unpredictable.
Especially because it looks like all you need is just a draw.
You guys just need a draw to finish, probably to finish second most likely.
Whereas for us we will need to win.
But draw might not be enough if Giorgio wins against Portugal.
Which is not very likely.
But I will take the third position by far instead of the second position.
Because if you take the third position you get Spain I guess.
I don't think it makes much difference if you play the teams there are like Spain, France.
Honestly we are just hoping to make it through.
We might have to beat you or play in that way to beat you.
And you are right, it's possible that we will start by sitting back a bit.
Since you are so good on the ball and you will probably have more possession than us.
But that could be to our advantage.
Especially I heard that two of your centre defenders are suspended as well.
How big of a problem is it for your team?
I don't see much problem. But I don't know how good is your attacking players.
I have some good news for you. It looks like Patrick Schick is injured.
That's good.
He has a calf problem, he had to be brought off.
There is a tiny little chance because he has got a medical check-up.
But I don't think it's going to happen. It didn't look like it certainly.
If we take the ball I can't see a big difference in terms of quality between our defenders.
But if you guys catch us in the transition.
Like when we are passing the ball in the middle.
Then you catch us intervening the ball.
Then it might be a huge problem because our defenders can't run back.
What about in the air?
Because we seem to have players very good at heading the ball at the moment.
This specific team has a lot of players who are excellent at it.
Including Socek, Krejci and others.
So I wonder, is this something that could be your weakness?
Yeah, definitely.
Because in the midfield we have all the players who are shorter than you.
Here is the strategy we have to go for then.
You might try to just kick the ball long and try to get the ball afterwards.
The old school English football. Let's go for that.
It might work really.
I don't know.
It's also about speed and I think your players are pretty fast, aren't they?
Yeah, some of them.
If he gets you in the break, he might be really dangerous.
And Boran, there is something we could also talk about.
We could speculate about something here.
Looking at the other groups, yes, it looks like you might need three points.
Definitely four should always be enough to qualify from the third place.
But there is still a chance that two points could be enough.
What if there is a situation, because by the time our game is played on Wednesday,
we will know everything, because our game is one of the last games.
What if a draw suits both teams?
What if that scenario happens?
Do you think we could make some kind of a deal?
Yeah, I mean, no, I don't think so, because either side, like...
I guess if draw is enough for both of us, then we will try to win the game as well.
Either way.
But it's not as if we haven't seen this before.
We have seen this before in world football.
Absolutely.
There were moments when if both teams know that all they need is a draw,
I've seen some moments where defenders were just passing the ball in their own half.
There was no pressing from the other team, because what's the point?
If nobody wants to play.
But maybe second position, like if you get the second position,
you might get a different opponent rather than being in the third position.
So it's still a difference.
True, true. Let's be honest, there's not much to choose from.
All these teams are very good.
I mean, of course, I'm just having a laugh here.
I'm just joking.
Anyway, Boran, thank you very much for being on the podcast.
Normally, when I have an Orin guest, I would wish you good luck.
But unfortunately, in this case, I cannot do it.
So all I can do is to say thank you for coming on.
And hopefully both our teams qualify.
Hopefully.
Okay, man. Take care. Thank you again. Bye bye.
Bye.
Welcome back. As you know, this is a podcast about football,
but it's also an English learning podcast.
This is a podcast which can help you learn English.
And since I am the teacher, your host, Zdenek,
in case you don't remember my name, you know,
I might as well live up to the expectations here and teach you something.
So at one point I said to Boran, in the match against Georgia,
you scored some fantastic goals, real screamers.
A screamer is basically a powerful and impressive goal
scored from a significant distance or an acute angle,
often with great velocity and accuracy.
Velocity means speed.
Accuracy means it's precise, very precise shot.
And it's a term used to describe a goal that is struck fiercely
and hits the back of the net with force,
often leaving goalkeepers with little chance to save it
due to its speed and placement.
Yeah. There are other words we can use for a goal like that
from a long-range shot which finishes in top corner.
And that's a rocket, thunderbolt, stunner, cracker, bullet, or thunder strike.
Okay? My personal favorite is screamer and stunner.
Those are my favorite words to describe this kind of goal.
Okay. That's it for this episode.
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Thank you very much for listening and have a great day, everyone.
Take care. Bye-bye.