Difficulty Level: (1)→2→(3)
Important football (soccer) vocabulary is highlighted at the bottom of the page.
Watch the video first without reading the text so you practice your listening skills.
Think about these questions when you watch the video for the first time: Was it an easy game for Arsenal? Were Arsenal positive or negative in their tactics? [afterwards read the text to check your understanding]
Background: It’s October 2011 and Arsenal have had a really bad start to the season but manage to beat Chelsea 3-5 away. Robin Van Persie has scored a hat trick. This is his post-match interview.
Robin, Premier League hat tricks, you know, don’t come around every day. And they certainly don’t come around every day at Stamford Bridge… what a great day for you and the team…
Yes, it was. In my opinion, one of the hardest grounds in the world, because, to do it here, to score 5 goals here at Stamford Bridge is a big achievement.
Do you feel that today, and over the last couple of weeks, Arsenal have answered the critics, because people were very quick to criticise Arsenal this season, very quick.
Yes, I know, and I noticed. Er, if you look at our last 8 or 9 games, we’ve won, er, 7 or 8 of them, er, so we’re having a good run, not for the last couple of weeks, but, for 2 months now. So we’re coming back slowly to the game we want to play. I think that, er, yeah, today’s game showed everything what [that] a fan everywhere in the world wants to see. I think that we showed [a] really good game, erm, overall, we had to come back twice, you know, when they just scored, you know, just before half-time. It was a bit of a blow. But we came back, then they scored the 3-3, so we had to come back again. Yeah ?????? was a big game as well for us.
And just one final question. Arsene, in his interview, said that he knew a win here was not good enough. Most people would have thought that Arsenal would have settled for a draw here. But that says something about how you approach things from now on…
Yeah, we felt very similar to, er, to the boss, because we felt a draw isn’t really helping us [wouldn’t really help us]. You know, er, we needed to win, because, er, a draw, I think, yeah, we would have stayed 6 or, 6 points behind them anyway. Yeah, we needed to come back. So now, we are only 3 or 4 points behind them, I think, so we closed the gap. That’s why a draw wasn’t good enough.
*Underlined text in brackets [ ] show alternatives which are more common in standard English.
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a ground: a synonym for stadium
achievement: something very good and difficult that you have succeeded in doing
a good run: good results in recent matches
a draw: the teams have the same number of goals at the end of the match
to settle for something: to be happy with something even though it’s not the best thing
to close the gap: to get more points than the team above this week, so the points difference is now less
to score a hat trick: to score 3 goals in one match
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