Those utterly absorbed in any sport tend to speak their own language. Certainly that is true for soccer, the sport people in most of the world call football. Soccer-speak is filled with clichés that sometimes can baffle fans on the US side of the pond who tune in telecasts at odd hours that feature broadcasters who refer to “cultured left feet” or “flying teacups.” To make sense of all this, even for British fans, Adam Hurrey began writing a blog to decipher the language. It became a hit on the Web, so the London-based soccer writer has collected these blogs into this amusing, compact book.
Here’s an excerpt from Football Clichés:
“ ‘We’ve gone quiet!’ Going quiet … is the sign of a malfunctioning team. No one is talking, which means they all might as well go home. A period of notable quietness is ended only when the captain draws everyone’s attention to it: ‘Come on lads, we’ve gone quiet!’ It can, at the shouter’s discretion, be bookended with ‘… haven’t we?’, to offer the illusion of a debate where one is really not available.”
