There are only a few weeks left in the season and things are getting exciting, nervous and frenetic in the European leagues.
Who will win the title? Who will be relegated? Who will qualify for the Champions League? Who will suffer the indignity of finishing below Chelsea?
All of this will combine to create a whirlwind, chaotic and often confusing time. So to help you make sense of it all, here are some sentences you’ll hear over the next few weeks…
The break-in
Let’s start with the basics. For some reason, the final stages of any season are often characterized as a foot race, as if we can’t collectively handle the concept of multiple football matches finally reaching a conclusion, so we must visualize them as people in sweat. sprint towards a finish line. Anyway: run-in = the last few matches, usually for those with something at stake.
The thread (until)
Continuing the racing theme, when the conclusion of the season is uncertain and it looks like things will be close to the end, they will “go all the way down”, evoking the frankly insane past practice where the end of a horse racing be signified by a wire at the finish which the horses would have to break. This seems incredibly perilous.
End of business
See above, to a point, but “end of business” tends to be a little longer than run-in. Typically, everything after Easter in the structure of the European season is the end of business: the time when deals are done, hopes are realized and dreams are dashed.
It’s squeaky butt time
In the break-in period, when things are happening at their most business-wise, people get nervous. And that’s where this aphorism from Sir Alex Ferguson comes in…well, sort of.
There is some controversy over whether the former Manchester United manager actually coined the phrase: the story is that he said something that sounded like this at a press conference, but that didn’t was unclear due to a combination of his broad Scottish accent and cordial recording. It was either “ball time” or “butt time”: the assembled journalists discussed which was more likely, voted, and the former was chosen.
It’s also unclear exactly what Ferguson meant, if he actually said “squeaky…”: Competing theories about what squeaky butt time literally refers to include nervous farting, the squeaking caused by tense moving on a plastic seat, the sweat that causes said squeaks. , or even just… uh… butt-related discomfort caused by tension-filled scenarios. Whatever the intention, it simply refers to the nervousness over the end of the season. And is listed in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Six points
A match between two teams competing at the top or bottom of the table, which becomes so important that winning it feels like it would be worth six points, rather than three.
On the beach
The exact opposite of the teams involved in the six points are those who have nothing to play for and as such their minds have already moved past the end of the season and are thinking about their vacation. So when they play with little engagement or enthusiasm, they are “on the beach.” Probably in Dubai.
In the showcase
The players who are on the beach may also be in the window, reminiscent of a pleasant seaside gift shop selling trinkets made from seashells, those bottles containing multi-colored sand and disgruntled Premier League footballers. This term is used to describe players who have little to play for and thus find motivation by trying to impress other teams who might want to sign them this summer.
As is
It is more appropriate to reserve it for the last day of the season, when all matches are played at the same time and the shifting sands of the standings develop in real time. So, let’s say Arsenal take the lead in their match in the first five minutes, they could be described as ‘top of the league… as things stand!’ » And then things will change over and over again, to the point where it’s basically a waste of time trying to keep track of everything. But it allows the commentators to shout excitedly during the match.
The relegation trap
The portal through which demoted teams enter the league/whatever the next lower division. Not a real hatch.
Basement Battle
The basement is the bottom of any rating, as is the bottom of a house – although this is confusing, architecturally speaking, given that the hatch opens to a lower level. low than low.
The lottery (play-offs)
Many things in football qualify as a “lottery” – that is, something you participate in but which is not actually based on skill or skill and is governed solely by chance – but perhaps even more confusing than believing that penalties are part of it. in this category there are the play-offs to determine who will be promoted and, in some countries, who will be relegated.
The idea here is how you could finish several points ahead of another team, then lose to them in a single match and thus your season fail, but the lack of chance involved is a concept that football fans English, in particular. , just can’t understand.
The richest game in football
As such, the importance placed on the Championship play-off final, in deciding who advances to the Premier League, needs to be measured. And as this is English football, the only measure we can put on it is monetary: the winner of this match will guarantee themselves something like £190 million in TV money, and although it would be a lot more entertaining if this money was delivered from the air to The conclusion of the match, like the ticker, is nevertheless still billed as “the richest match in football”.
Juggernaut
The team that ends the season on their way to glory with an inevitable and unstoppable feeling of dominance and is therefore always Manchester City (currently on a 32-game unbeaten run).
Invincible
Applicable only to Bayer Leverkusen.
Champions elected
Probably not for this Premier League season, unless Arsenal or City collapse quite flamboyantly in the next two games. The team that, although not officially champions, will be in the very near future.
Bottled Jobs
Necklaces, mainly. Teams/players in a winning position who ended up throwing it away, in theory, due to lack of courage or moral strength. There are various ideas about the etymology of the phrase, but the most likely is probably rooted in Cockney rhyming slang – bottle and glass = ass – the suggestion being that whoever “bottles” it has lost control from his intestines out of fear.
Bolts
The opposite of a bottle job, in a way. A player who emerges from a pack, like a horse, to become a national team contender in the final weeks of a season before a major tournament. Take your pick this year from Kobbie Mainoo, Adam Wharton, Dominic Solanke or Jarrad Branthwaite.
Coefficients
Most people don’t know how things work. Cars, air traffic control, wifi – we just assume they will work and rely on a small group of specialists who know how they work to tell us what’s wrong when they don’t work.
“Coefficients” also belong to this group. Simply put, this is the ranking of certain leagues across Europe compared to rival leagues, based on their teams’ performances in European competitions. And they are important because they will decide which two countries get an extra place in the Champions League next season. It will be Italy and almost certainly Germany, but you will still hear this word many times in the coming weeks.
(Top photos: Getty Images)