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Love football, learn English.
How did the Swiss manage to beat the Italians?
What were the key moments in the Germany-Denmark game?
Who was the unfortunate hero in the same game?
And what's a stonewall penalty?
Hi everyone, welcome to another episode of the Footglitch Podcast.
My name is Denik Lukas and the Footglitch Podcast is your way to learn English through football.
And today I would like to talk about the first day of the round of 16.
There were two matches and they were Switzerland-Italy and then also Germany-Denmark.
Both these games ended 2-0.
You would think, okay, Italy beat Switzerland, right?
And Germany beat Denmark.
Almost, you would almost be right.
Yes, Germany did beat Denmark 2-0, but so did Switzerland-Italy.
That's right, Switzerland made it to the quarter-final.
Is that shocking?
Well, it shouldn't be because Switzerland have been playing really great football.
They haven't been beaten yet.
They had five points in the group stage.
They even drew against Germany.
And lo and behold, they beat Italy and it was well deserved.
From the first second of the game, they really wanted to win.
The Swiss players' spirit was incredible.
Everyone was just playing for each other.
Everyone was running around and pressing and doing the nitty-gritty, doing hard work.
And they also dominated the possession in the first half.
And they had more shots on goal, more attacking opportunities, more passing.
Especially in the first half, it may have changed a little bit in the second half because of the way the game was going.
But basically, Italy were not able to deal with the Swiss.
They were aggressive. They were just brilliant in that game.
And Italy showed absolutely nothing.
There were some signs of problems in the group stage.
There were some signs of problems.
They barely made it to the playoffs.
They barely made it to the knockout stages.
And now this was how it sort of played out in the end.
The Swiss scored their first goal in the 37th minute through Freuler and then made it 2-0 right after the halftime in the 46th minute through an excellent goal by Vargas.
It was an amazing, brilliant, top-bins finish.
Just check it online, listeners.
Have a look on YouTube. Vargas 2-0 for Switzerland.
And since then or from that moment, Italy, they just looked clueless.
As I said, they only had one shot on target.
You can't really do anything in the game if you can't even shoot on target, right?
The Swiss really kept the Italians at bay.
For example, Gianluca Scamacca, the ex-West Ham player, David Moyes didn't like much.
He has been unable to score goals for a long, long time now.
And yeah, so I'm not surprised that Italians are out.
Historically, you may think, well, Italians are one of the football's powerhouses.
Yeah, but like their squad in 2024.
They looked like nothing in comparison to their past iterations, honestly.
I think the Italians' problems are quite big, quite noticeable.
And they are struggling at the moment to maintain their footballing dominance.
And we have to remind ourselves that they did not qualify for the last two World Cups.
Yes, they did win the previous European Championship, the one that happened during Covid.
But that's about it.
Maybe it was a bit of a miracle, really, considering how much on decline Italian football has been.
It's a real problem, I think.
They have to deal with it somehow.
Ironically, three of the Switzerland's key players, including Freuler, Abichir, who assisted the second goal,
they play for Bologna, this season's surprising team of Serie A, a team that did really, really well.
Yeah, it's interesting that Italian football, I think they have a problem
because foreign players are dominating the top Italian clubs as well.
And perhaps you could say that it's a bit unsurprising that this happened.
But still, you would think that Italy put up a fight.
Well, really, no.
So for some, this may have been a shocking result, for others, not really.
For me, what did I expect?
I kind of expected a penalty shootout.
I expected an even game.
Now, the Swiss, they beat the Italians.
There you go.
And in the other game, Germans beat the Danish.
And I would say this was another weird game, honestly,
because it looked like the Danish were the better team in the first 20, 30 minutes.
But then the storm hit.
When I say the storm hit, this is not a metaphor.
There was a real thunderstorm in Dortmund.
And the referee, I think it was Mark Oliver, he had to interrupt the game.
And the players had to go back to the dressing room for about 20, 30 minutes
because there was too much thunderstorm and lightning and hail, huge, huge balls of hail.
And obviously, this was dangerous to the players.
And that sort of, I would say, that sort of interrupted the momentum a little bit
for the Danish, who started the game really well.
And then a big moment, the biggest talking point of this game, obviously, was Anderson.
Not Hans Christian Anderson, not the poet, not the guy that wrote the fairy tales.
No, there is a player Anderson in the Danish team.
And I can't remember his first name, but his surname is definitely Anderson.
And he's a right back.
He plays as a right back.
And he scored a goal.
He scored a goal for Denmark in the 48th minute.
Yeah. So they were like two half times, basically, because of that interruption,
the weather interruption, and then they did it again because obviously you need half time.
So he scored.
But unfortunately, this goal was disallowed, was ruled out for a marginal offside.
It was literally like one centimeter when they were showing the images.
It looked so harsh on the Swiss player.
We could barely see it with the naked eye, that offside.
But that's what happened, you know.
The goal was disallowed.
And to make things worse, two minutes later, the same player,
unfortunately for him, gave away a penalty because he touched the ball with his hand.
And it was one of those that a sound clip had to be played again,
and the spike had to be shown on screen.
I don't know how you feel about these, but I just don't like it at all,
because obviously the Czech Republic, they were also on the receiving end with this rule.
And it seems like these handball penalties, they are extremely harsh on the players.
With this one in particular, Andersson was, I think, like one and a half meters away
from the German guy who crossed the ball.
And so, you know, the rule of handball is really hard to understand sometimes,
because you have to take into account several aspects of that situation, of that moment.
First of all, obviously, is it in the penalty box, right?
Does the player have the hand in a natural position?
Now, nobody knows what the natural position is, of course.
If that hand is next to the player's body, it's almost never a handball, right?
But if you raise your hand a little bit, well, then you have to determine
whether that is a natural or unnatural position, which is really sometimes hard to call.
And then it should be about proximity, like how far the player is from the ball.
And does the player have any chance to react?
In my opinion, in this case, the player had zero chance to react.
It was extremely harsh on the Danish.
And Germans were awarded a penalty for this.
I honestly don't know. It just felt a bit too much for me,
especially like I think everybody felt for this guy, Andersson, the player,
because he scores the goal and then two minutes later he gives away a penalty,
which leads obviously to the Germans' first goal.
Kai Havertz made it one nil from penalty spot.
Yeah, I just don't know. VAR can sometimes be so stupid
because any small touch seems to be a handball on the international level.
It's weird because I'm used to watching the Premier League
and it's definitely not like that there.
So I just don't understand the rule anymore.
If any of you understand the rule of handball, please let me know how it works.
Because when you hear the experts and pundits talk in the studios,
they don't understand it either.
Anyway, then Jamal Musiala made it two nil and scored his third goal of the tournament,
which puts him now level in the Golden Boot competition with Lukaku's disallowed VAR goals.
Yeah, Jamal Musiala, I think there is one more player from Georgia
who has the same number of goals.
So yeah, well, Germans, they got it done and it wasn't pretty,
but in the end I suppose they were the better team, all things considered.
Perhaps you could say it was a game of two halves a little bit.
Or was it a game of three halves? Something like that.
But we've got two teams in the quarter-finals. It's Switzerland and Germany.
All right, guys, well, it's time to teach you something now.
So I'll speak to you soon.
All right, welcome back to the Language Corner.
In this part of the show, as always, I'm going to do my job,
and that is an English teacher, and teach you something.
Of course, because this podcast is called the Footgris podcast, right?
So we talk about football first, and then we need to talk about English as well.
So this time I would like to take a look at the word penalty.
You all know what a penalty is, right?
When a penalty is given, you have all played football, you have all watched football.
I don't need to explain that.
But let's talk about words which are used before the word penalty.
Let's talk about collocations with the word penalty.
So we have often adjectives which are used to describe the penalty.
So we could talk about a harsh penalty.
A harsh penalty is what I said when I was talking about the Anderson situation.
It was a harsh penalty.
It was a severe and overly strict punishment.
It seemed too strict on the player.
Now it's var, it happens more often than not.
Now a similar one could be a dubious penalty or a controversial penalty or soft penalty.
You really don't think these penalties should be given or at least there are different interpretations of that decision.
Like it shouldn't be given, right?
So those are penalties which are not 100 percent.
The opposite would be a stonewall penalty.
A stonewall penalty is a penalty that is clear, undeniable, and there is an obvious offense and you can't question it at all.
So similarly you could say unquestionable penalty.
You could say a fair penalty possibly.
You could say a clear-cut penalty.
So it's very useful to learn these adjectives that go with the word penalty because then you're able to describe the kind of penalty it was.
Okay, I guess that will be it for today.
Thank you very much for listening.
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