This football language podcast looks at a short part of a match report and talks about some of the language of football used – including ‘all over the place’. The transcript for this podcast is available below, and you can also check out our huge glossary of footballing phrases
here. Visit our site to access all our previous posts and podcasts, and if you have any suggestions or questions please contact us at
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All Over the Place – Football Language Podcast – 2021-22 Season
DB: Hi there everyone. We hope you are all well and enjoying the football wherever you are.
My name’s Damon, one half of the languagecaster team. It’s been awful weather recently, but luckily the rain came just after the famous cherry blossom viewing season here in Tokyo. There’s a little bit of sun around today too, which is nice. Damian, the other member of the languagecaster team is on his travels in Ireland, and I hope he’s got good weather there too, so he can sit outside and maybe enjoy a glass of Guinness!
On this short podcast, I’ll be talking about a short part of a Guardian newspaper report on the match between Chelsea and Brentford, especially the phrase ‘all over the place’.
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All Over the Place
OK, let’s talk football language. The section the report I want to talk about today is this:
“Chelsea were all over the place. Eriksen made it 2-1, Toney released Janelt to score his second with a lovely dink and the rout was complete when poor defending from Rüdiger teed up Wissa.” (
The Guardian, April 2022)
Let’s start with ‘Chelsea were all over the place‘, which means that their defence was chaotic, there was no discipline. It means that players were not in position, in the correct ‘place‘, but were all over the pitch, not where they should be. Another phrase which you may hear, meaning the same thing is ‘They were at sixes and sevens‘, which also means to be a complete mess.
So in this game Chelsea lost 4-1 after being 1-0 in the lead. their defence was all over the place, they were at sixes and sevens.
(to) Release
OK, next: let’s look at the verb ‘to release‘ Toney released Janet to score’. This means that Toney played a pass allowing Janet to have a great chance on goal; he released him from his marker. This means the pass was ‘nicely weighted‘, or the pass ‘put him though on goal‘, it gave him space to shoot.
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(a) dink
The pass that Toney released is described as a ‘lovely dink‘. Dink is a noun, but can also be used as a verb –
to dink. It is a pass, or a shot, that is hit softly up and over a defender or a goalkeeper. It requires skill and also vision.