English Through Football Podcast: April 2020 – Hard-Fought Win: On this week’s podcast, we take a look back at a Liverpool match. Liverpool are the team that one of your hosts, Damon, supports. We discuss why it was a key match this season for Liverpool and also talk about some of the football language connected to it. There is, of course, a transcript, and we also have a listening quiz – great for teachers and students of English. You can listen to the podcast by clicking on the file below – you can also subscribe and listen to all our football-language podcasts – there are hundreds! You can improve your English by reading as you listen, or if you are a teacher of English you can use the transcript to make several listening and/or reading activities for your learners. If you have questions or comments, email us at: admin@languagecaster.com (Damian=DF Damon=DB). Learn English Through Football Podcast: April 2020 – Hard-Fought Wins Introduction DB: Hi there listeners and welcome to the Learn English Through Football Podcast. As always, we hope that you are all well and safe wherever you are listening to us in these difficult times. My name is Damon, and I’m based in Tokyo, and at languagecaster, we’ve been posting about football language, revisiting great World Cup games, testing your knowledge of the World Cups, and generally still talking about the beautiful game of football. Now, this podcast is a little different to our usual format – because the times are a little unusual with the COVID-19 crisis around the world. We will be looking at a Liverpool match from the suspended season and talking about some of the football language connected to it. It gives me a chance, as a Liverpool fan, to remember how well my team was doing too! Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (In Japanese) DF: Yes, you are listening to languagecaster.com and that message was in Japanese. Hello everyone, hope we are all doing well. This is Damian in London. By the way, Damon, how is your Japanese? DB: Hmm.. not as good as it should be. Maybe I should watch more football games in Japanese to get some practice! 2019-20 Season: Liverpool – Key Match – a Hard Fought Win DF: Good idea. OK, now you said we were going to look at a key match from Liverpool’s season, that’s the 2019-20 season of course. Which one did you pick? DB: Well, I picked Liverpool’s visit to Aston Villa in early November 2019. DF: Oh, I remember that one! So, you said ‘Liverpool’s visit’, so they were playing away. DB: That’s right. They were away to Aston Villa. And Villa were playing at home or we could say ‘playing on home turf.’ DF: Right. Now, why did you pick this game? DB: Well, I picked this game because it was a hard-fought win, which I think kept Liverpool’s momentum in the league and also showed they had the ability to grind out a result. DF: So, you’ve mentioned two phrases there: a ‘hard fought win’ and ‘grind out a win‘ – both of these mean that Liverpool had to work really hard to get the three poin...