Whether you call it soccer or football, the World Cup starts today
Welcome to Plain English for Thursday, June 14, 2018—the day many of you have been waiting for. And if you are in Brazil, you have been waiting for this day since that terrible night of August 7, 2014. It is the beginning of the World Cup, the world’s biggest sporting competition. And today’s episode has some interesting World Cup facts to get you ready for the big tournament. The phrase we’ll discuss at the end of the episode is “licking your chops.”
I have a bit of a dilemma here. First of all, I know that many of you come from big soccer-playing countries, like Brazil and Spain and Mexico. And I also know that some people in the audience—some people—may not be sports fans. So, I need to find a way to continue to talk about the World Cup in the podcast, but I don’t want to bore the people who are just not into the beautiful game. So, I have decided to do a third weekly episode during the World Cup only, and those episodes will be on Mondays, starting June 25. The regular episodes about other things will come out on Wednesdays and Fridays, just during the World Cup. That way, I figure the sports fans can get their fix of World Cup news, but everyone else can still enjoy two non-sports episodes a week. The only potential downside is that it’s 50% more work every week for me and JR, the producer. I haven’t told JR about the third weekly episode yet.
All right, so today’s episode is number 55, so you can find the transcript, including interactive translations, online at PlainEnglish.com/55.
World Cup starts today
The biggest sporting event in the world starts today—thirty-two men’s soccer teams representing nations from Iceland to Brazil, and Japan to Mexico will start their month-long tournament to determine the best nation at the world’s most popular sport. The World Cup kicks off with a match between host team Russia and Saudi Arabia at 6:00 this evening at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium. That’s mid-morning here in the western hemisphere. We will know the winner of the whole tournament on July 15.
Russia is hosting its first World Cup ever, and the matches will take place in 12 stadiums around the country. Most of the games will be in the western part of Russia so they can be televised at more convenient times in Europe and the Americas.
There are some interesting storylines to watch. You may remember that in the last World Cup, Germany stunned host team Brazil 7-1 in the 2014 World Cup semifinals, and Brazil has been licking its chops in anticipation of the opportunity to make up for its embarrassing loss four years ago. Germany went on to beat Argentina 1-0 in the finals. Speaking of Argentina, Lionel Messi, one of the sport’s biggest stars, has about every title and honor to his credit, but he has never been on a World Cup-winning team. He’ll try to end Argentina’s 32-year World Cup drought this year.
Mohamed Salah, who had to come out of the Champions League finals, may be healthy enough to play for Egypt. Some up and coming players are looking to use the sport’s biggest stage as a launchpad for their own careers. Players like Hakim Ziyech of Morocco and Fedor Smolov of Russia are hoping that strong World Cup performances could help land them contracts in Europe next year.
Here are a couple of World Cup facts for you. The very first World Cup was held in Uruguay in 1930 and featured 13 teams. Uruguay beat Argentina in that first-ever world cup. The United States came in third.
In the current format, 32 teams qualify for the tournament. In the years prior to the World Cup, teams compete for one of the 31 open spots in the tournament—the final spot is reserved for the host country. Once the 32 teams are determined, they are divided into eight groups of four teams each. All teams play several games within their group in the first two weeks of the tournament, and the top two teams in each group advance to the next round of 16. After that, every game is a knockout game, meaning the winner advances to the next stage, until there is one winner left standing. I said that is the current format, because FIFA voted to expand the tournament to 48 teams, but you’ll have to wait until 2026 to see the new format.
Here’s something that surprised me: the ball is different from year to year. The actual design and construction of the ball can be radically different from year to year, even though in the modern era, all of them are made by Adidas. A typical soccer ball has 32 panels in the shapes of pentagons or hexagons—five and six-sided shapes. But each World Cup has a specially designed ball, with a distinct construction and a distinct look. The ball used in South Africa in 2010 had just eight panels and was known for unpredictable flight patterns that players generally hated. Then in 2014 in Brazil, they used a six-panel ball, and the panels came together in unusual shapes. But they did extensive wind-tunnel testing beforehand to make sure it wasn’t as unpredictable as the ball in 2010. This year, they’re using a ball called the Telstar 18, which has six panels glued, rather than stitched, together. It’s black and white and has a digitized design.
Then finally a quick fact you need to know if you’re studying English and want to talk about the World Cup. Some English-speaking countries call this game soccer, while others call it football. Here’s where they say each. In the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, they call it soccer, while in England, Scotland, and parts of Africa that speak English all say football. In Ireland, they seem split between football and soccer. Then, of course, the word in most other languages besides English is a translation or adaptation of the word football—that’s certainly true for Spanish and Portuguese, and appears to be true for most of Europe, Russia, and Asia. The outlier is Italy, where they call it Calcio, which comes from the word “kick.”
Today’s episode is a little long, so I’ll keep this section brief, but I did want to say hello to
Chun-Pin from Taiwan and Cesar from Spain. Both of them joined the e-mail list last week and wrote in to say hi. If you would like to get the show announcement emails, which also feature links to English articles and a bonus vocabulary word twice a week, then go to PlainEnglish.com/mail.
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