In this short football language podcast for learners of English who love the beautiful game, we look at ways to describe Virgil Van Dijk’s headed goal against Crystal Palace in the Premier League. You can read a 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. Embed from Getty Imageswindow.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'1Y0gIuV_Qi51ToUkXZYFSg',sig:'trx_Eq5XR8tfZ9gN6vu9tBQ4N5bKSoxloynV3CQCRd8=',w:'594px',h:'370px',items:'1366421630',caption: false ,tld:'com',is360: false })}); Unstoppable Header: Learning English Through Football Podcast: 2021-22 Season – Crystal Palace v Liverpool DF: Hello everyone, this is Damian from the Languagecaster.com team – the podcast for all fans of football who want to improve their English skills – I hope you are all doing well. I am in London and am watching some Premier League football this weekend and I heard some nice language that described the opening goal from Liverpool’s Virgil Van Dijk against Crystal Palace. So, on this short podcast we’ll take a look at the phrases, ‘unstoppable header‘; ‘unsave-able‘ and ‘bullet header‘. Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Dutch). Unstoppable header So, on the radio, the commentator described this header from Van Dijk as unstoppable, that is, no keeper could stop this header on goal as it had so much power. In fact, he went on to say that even if there had been two keepers they would not have stopped the header such was the power. We can also hear this adjective ‘unstoppable‘ when describing a shot and even sometimes to describe a team; one that is playing so well that no one can stop them winning. Un-saveable In this report from The Guardian newspaper, the writer describes the header as ‘un-saveable‘ which means that it was such a good header that no keeper would be able to save it. Of course, we could also hear this phrase being used to describe a really hard or well placed shot that beats a keeper. In the rest of this report we can see how the Liverpool defender Van Dijk has created space for himself – he has peeled off to the front post which means he has moved towards the front of the goal (the front post) away from the opposition defenders where he can head the ball. The newspaper describes the way the player heads the ball as ‘meeting the delivery‘; the delivery is the cross from his team mate and so if a player meets a centre or cross it means that they connect with the ball; they head the ball. So, Van Dijk meets the delivery from his teammate which the newspaper describes as a thumping, unsave-able header. To thump a shot means to hit the ball really hard and so a thumping header is a really powerful header that crashes into the net – it has hit the back of the net with full force...