Learn English Through Football Podcast: Interview with Hatriqa

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Learn English Through Football Podcast: Interview with Hatriqa

In this week’s football-language podcast we have an interview with Mark Bailey from Hatriqa (www.hatriqa.com) in which we look at some more ways to use football to help learn literacy skills. We also look ahead to some of the big matches this weekend in our predictions, including the League Cup final and some top-of-the-table clashes in Spain, Italy and France. You can read the 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.

Hello

DB: You are listening to the Learn English Through Football Podcast.

Hello everyone and welcome to the show for all those who love the beautiful game of football and who want to improve their English language skills. My name is Damon. I hope you are well and enjoying good weather like we are here in Tokyo. I wonder what the weather is like in London where Damian is based.

DF: Hi Damon and hello to all our listeners. The weather here in London is bright but very, very cold indeed – we even had hail earlier on in the week.

But I am in a good mood as it’s the day after my favourite team Tottenham defeated Dutch side AZ Alkmaar in the second leg of their Europa League last-16 tie. Spurs won 3-1 on the night to go through 3-2 on aggregate though it was quite tense for a long time.

DB: Congratulations to Spurs! Well my team, Liverpool were dumped out of the Champions League in the round of 16 by PSG. Thanks for asking, Damian! We did some football language earlier in the week, smash and grab, describing Liverpool’s lucky win late on against PSG in the first leg. You can also check out our post on ‘cutting edge‘, which is something Liverpool lacked in the second leg!

So listener, if you haven’t checked these out please do: we are on all the podcast feeds out there – just search for Languagecaster or Learn English Through Football and you’ll find us.

Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (Liverpool fan)

Today’s Show

DB: Well, we have a special show today, as we welcome Mark Bailey, who is the Director of Education from the football language company Hatriqa.com, and he will be talking about his work and of course look at some football language. After that, you will be giving us your predictions, Damian, for some big games this weekend.

Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Korean)

DB: Yes, you are listening to Languagecaster.com and that message was in Korean. And now, here’s Damian with our guest from Hatriqa, Mark Bailey.

Interview: Hatriqa and Mark Bailey 

DF: Right. We’re very happy today to have Mark, Mark Bailey from Hatriqa.com. Hello, Mark. How are you doing?

MB: Hi. Hi, Damian. Good to be here. Thanks for inviting me on.

DF: It’s fantastic. And can we ask a little question, what’s your favourite football team first of all Mark?

MB: Manchester United.

DF: OK, so we’ll move on then…I’m joking, I’m joking of course. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself maybe and then maybe what you do in the football world?

What’s Your Favourite Team?

MB: Yeah, yeah, sure. And so, first of all, so I am from Manchester probably the first thing I should clarify since I’ve said that I’m a Manchester United fan; I know sometimes we get a bad reputation for… for having fans all over the place that’s not.. not necessarily from Manchester, but yeah, I am originally from Manchester but I now live in London.

So, my situation now is that I’m a lecturer at UCL (University College London). So I work in the Institute of Education here. And then…I guess, so I’ll try and do a short version of a story to explain about why I might be on your podcast.

So, so I am at UCL teaching English here, but part of my research here I started to do research into how Premier League clubs had language tuition and language provision for their players, for their coaches.

So that was a research project I had. And then through a department in UCL called The Knowledge Lab and then later through UCL Innovation Enterprise, we then sort of commercialised some of the ideas from that and and turned it into an actual commercial venture.

What is Hatriqa?

So now we have a business called Hatriqa. So, that’s… that’s the connection to football. And then what Hatriqa does is that we use the power of football to help people to learn English. So, there’s basically sort of two ways we’re doing that. One is for people in the football industry, so this could be players, coaches, referees, even fans. So in that case it’s… it is real football English. So what do you say when you’re on the pitch? What do you say in team meetings? How do you give an interview after a match? How do you do a post-match debrief, whatever it may be, tactics, etcetera. So that’s for people in the football industry.

And then the other side that we’re doing is… is general English, so daily conversation, but in particular, we’re working in literacy. So we have… we have part of the business called ‘the soccer reader method’. So we’re working with the Jamie Johnson series of books.

So it’s a best-selling series of books written by Dan Freedman. And that’s in the UK and America that’s aimed at native-speaker kids probably around the age of eight to 12-13 will be their kind of peak age they’re aiming at, but it’s also been turned into a BBC TV series as well. So we’re working with…The Jimmy Johnson books and we’re using them to create a literacy programme for native-speaker kids and also for non-native speaker kids as well. So we’ve got the two sides there. There’s the football English and then there’s the general English and particularly literacy.

DF: That’s absolutely fantastic. Sounds really, really interesting. I am just wondering can people outside of football, would they be able to access any of these kind of materials or books or anything?

MB: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So I think especially the Jamie Johnson stuff…I mean the books, the theme is football and the setting is football. But then basically it’s about a story, a story of Jamie, Jamie Johnson, who starts off as a… as a ten-year old school kid who just loves football and his dream is to go from the playground to being a professional player.

And then the books follow his journey as he gets older, a little bit like Harry Potter, he gets older in each book. So then by the end, you know, spoiler alert, he does become a professional player.

So yeah, the books themselves is not really, it’s not Roy of the Rovers kind of football books. It’s not necessarily describing action in the game. I mean, there’s…there’s a little bit of that, just as in Harry Potter, there’s a little bit about Quidditch, but it’s, it’s actually really about the story of Jamie and his friends, his family, all the issues that… that happen in his life, and at school and challenges that that he faces growing up and trying to follow his dream of being a football player. So it’s definitely accessible for people that are… that are not really into football.

DF: That sounds fantastic!

DB: This is really interesting. I’m especially interested in what kind of football language Hatriqa helps professional players and coaches with. As mentioned, the language on the pitch and in the changing rooms is covered, but I wonder if there is any work on cliches, like ‘a game of two halves‘ or ‘they wanted it more‘, to help understand the narrative surrounding football, built by fans and the media for example.

The Language of Football

DF: Here at Languagecaster, we talk about the language of football, like you and we kind of… are always interested to hear what people kind of think about that language or what kind of favourite cliches or cliches that they don’t like at all. So, how would you, kind of, let’s start off with this with Manchester United…what kind of language would you use to describe your team in general? And then maybe we’ll talk about this season.

Mark describe’s his favourite team

MB: Well, the… the in-general part seems seems so long ago. You know the… the, I guess, the… the image, the reputation of Manchester United going back throughout the decades I guess you would say you would think of Manchester United as what… being an attacking team, is probably the first thing you would expect. They usually play with wingers; exciting ,attacking wingers; with fast wingers and then lots of… of lots of crossing into the box.

Thinking back to some of the famous players like Van Nistelrooy. What else have we got in there? Obviously, even like when Ronaldo was there, Wayne Rooney… it’s typically these kind of exciting wide players. So, to go to your original question, what words could I use? General, yeah, I think attacking is probably the word, you would say, exciting, attacking what we would like to think of as Manchester United fans.

Disappointing…

More recently, disappointing would be…would be a good word. I think, I think that it’s got two meanings, hasn’t it, disappointing? One is the feeling like as a fan, I feel disappointed. So it’s disappointing in that respect. But also, like, the quality of the team as well. You say, you know, it’s a ‘disappointing team’ isn’t it, it’s quite low quality.

So disappointing, frustrating as well would be another word, where you know we’re… we’re always hoping that we’re going to turn the corner. We’re hoping that this season will be better and then next season will be better. So I think disappointing, frustrating. And then to use a real football phrase, maybe ‘in transition’ would be a phrase; you hear that quite a lot: ‘in transition’. So we’re going from a a bad place to a good place. We hope.

DF: I like that and as a Spurs fan I feel your pain…

DB: Well, recently, Damian talked about a cliche regarding his team, Tottenham Hotspur, which was ‘Spursy‘ I wonder if Mark has any cliches he likes or identifies with his team?

Cliches in football: Credit to the lads; It is what it is

DF: Can I ask a question about football cliches? Do you have a football cliche that you like or you dislike?

MB: I don’t think I have one that like. I mean, there’s so many…there’s so many cliches out there and obviously we…I’m 45 years old now, so I’ve watched so many games on TV and seen so many interviews and so many bits of  commentary, that you hear so many cliches, don’t you? Whether it’s things like ‘credit to the lads,’ you know, that’s one. Even the foreign players now they they’ve obviously been doing media training as part of their…part of their language learning they do media training at the club. So, somebody has obviously told them, ‘yeah, just say you say credit to the lads, credit to the lads’. What does that mean? Yeah, ‘credit to the lads…we worked hard, everyone did well’. Yeah, ‘we go again’.

I know Virgil Van Dijk, I’ve noticed in every interview he gives, he always says ‘it is what it is’. If they’ve won a game, ‘well, it is what it is’ we’ve got three points. There’s nothing we can do that’s… that’s, that’s the result. So now we have to think about the next game. Yeah. So ‘it is what it is’.

DF: But it is interesting. As you mentioned there a lot of the players who come from overseas who don’t have English as their first language; to still be able to do media work, you know, straight after a game, you know, it’s still impressive. They may just need to know a couple of phrases to get them through, kind of thing, you know.

Interviewers need training

MB: Yeah, well, one thing that always surprises me is the actual interviewer. So they…you would think that they have training on how to ask questions to… to non-native players. And non-native speaker players. And particularly you know, you’d think they would have a little bit of a short list. OK, today’s game is, for example Manchester United against Tottenham Hotspur, you know, and then you know who’s man the match towards the end of game, you’d think they’d have a little profile, ‘is this guy any good at English? Is he not… not so good’?

So then they would… you’d think they would grade the questions, but surprisingly they don’t really do that, do they? The interviewers still ask, really, really idiomatic questions; quite difficult questions that I think really only a native speaker would know. So you end up with these answers where the players have got these prepared answers that pretty much no matter what the question is, they will give you the same answer, right… ‘Oh, well, you know, I’m just really happy that we we won the game, it’s not about me it’s about the team…’ that’s not what the question was but that’s what the answer will be.

Thank you!

DB: That was great stuff from Mark and we’ll be hearing more from him over the next couple of weeks. I thought his point about the interviewers for non-English players being more aware of how to ask questions, or how to help the player in the interview was really important. Thanks Mark and check out Hatriqa.com to find out more about what Mark does.

Predictions

DB: Next up is our predictions section and we’ve got some fantastic games to try to predict, including my team taking on Newcastle United in the League Cup. Can Liverpool make it 11 trophies in this competition or can Newcastle get their first silverware for over 70 years? Let’s hear what Damian thinks about that and the other games.

League Cup Final: Liverpool v Newcastle

DF: Right, let’s start with the big game this weekend in England as Liverpool face Newcastle in the Carabao Cup (that’s the League Cup) final at Wembley; the first domestic silverware to be decided. Newcastle have not won a domestic trophy in 70 years – that’s more than Spurs – and so their fans are desperate to win this one. But I think Liverpool, despite injuries to key players and the disappointment of being eliminated from the Champions League earlier in the week, will have too much for the Newcastle side. 2-0 to Liverpool for me.

Atlético Madrid v Barcelona

DF: So, another team that were eliminated on penalties in the Champions League earlier in the week were, of course, Atlético and they host Barcelona in a top-of-the-table clash in La Liga. I think ‘Atleti’ will bounce back and win this one and maybe even go on to win La Liga. 1-0 for me to the home side.

PSG v Marseille

DF: The big game in France sees Ligue 1 leaders PSG host Marseille in Le Classique. Paris are 16 points clear of their rivals and should win this one as well. Maybe 2-0 to PSG for me.

Arsenal v Chelsea

DF: There is a big London derby this weekend in the Premier League as Arsenal take on Chelsea on Sunday. I think Arsenal will win this one and maintain their very slim hopes of catching Liverpool! 2-1 to the Gunners.

Atalanta v Inter

DF: And finally, the big game in Italy sees Atalanta host Inter. Currently, Inter are three points clear of Atalanta so the home side will have to win in order to get back in the title race. I think they might – 2-1 to Atalanta.

Those are my predictions. What do you think will happen in these (and other) games this weekend?

DB: Thanks Damian. I hope Liverpool do run out 2-0 winners, but their recent history in finals points to extra time and maybe even penalties. The Atlético v Barcelona and Atalanta v Inter matches should be crackers, and I see a draw in Spain and a win for Inter in Italy.

Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Catalan)

Contact

DF: OK, if you have any questions about football words or phrases that you hear or read or have any feedback on our podcast, please contact us via email at admin@languagecaster.com. Visit our website to explore our Football Language Forum; you can ask questions about football language. And of course, don’t forget to check out our extensive glossary of football terms, filled with expressions, phrases, and clichés about the beautiful game. And help to support us by spreading the word about our podcast and football-language site. We are on many of the social media outlets such as Instagram, Facebook, Blue Sky, YouTube, and more.

Stinger: You are listening to languagecaster.com (in Cantonese)

Goodbye

DB: Thanks for that message, which was in Cantonese. And thanks everyone for listening today, and another big thank you to Mark from Hatriqa.

And before we go, we’d love to hear from you and to find out how we are getting on so we have posted a link in this post and on our site for a short survey – if you get a few minutes then that would be great.

DF: Enjoy all the football this week. I’m going to see some non-league football on Saturday as Dulwich Hamlet take on Cheshunt. And of course I’m really looking forward to the top-of-the-table clashes this weekend. Bye bye.

DB: Ta-ra! Enjoy all the football!

Football Language Glossary