Today’s World Cup language podcast looks at the phrase, ‘coast past‘ which was used to describe the French victory against Poland in their last-16 match at the 2022 World Cup. You can read the 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.   2022 World Cup Language Podcast: Last 16 France v Poland – Coast Past Embed from Getty Imageswindow.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'UvhobMLHQXtLRCw22NeUqQ',sig:'UH8eJnDRwC7VH5FaFmoWFerJDF3qxAOmHbFOgTbpw6I=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1446880289',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })}); DF: Hello again everyone and welcome to Languagecaster.com – the football-language podcast for learners and teachers of English. I’m Damian and I’m in London and of course Damon, the other member of the Languagecaster team, is in Japan – I wonder if watching football in the middle of the night is having an effect on him! We continue with our look at some language from the last-16 knock-out matches and on today’s World Cup language podcast we explain the phrase ‘to coast past‘ which was used in a BBC report to describe the French victory over Poland. Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (from a French fan) This is how the BBC reported on the French win against Poland in their last-16 match. The World Cup holders in the sentence obviously refers to France as they won the last World Cup in 2018 – and they easily defeated the Polish team to qualify for the quarter finals. How do we know that it was an easy victory? Well, the verb to coast means to take things easy – you might not have to work so hard to get something done quite successfully and this is what the French team did against their opponents – they won 3-1 with the Polish goal nothing more than a late consolation – a consolation goal. The word or particle ‘past’ adds a little more information to this idea of easily beating an opponent by suggesting that the winning team moves into the next round of a competition or tournament. I am not sure that we would use the phrase coast past in a regular league game. What do we think? So, France coasted past Poland to reach the last eight while the Polish side will go home. Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (from a Polish fan) Contact Now, if you want to ask us any football-language questions or simply say hello during this World Cup then you can do so by adding a comment on our site here or by using our forum. You can also send us an email at