Hello everyone, my name is Damian from the languagecaster.com team and on this podcast we continue with our Champions League Final week countdown and we take a look back at the all-German final from 2013 when Bayern Munich defeated Borussia Dortmund at Wembley. In this podcast we looked at five key words from the match – I wonder if any of these words and phrases will be used to describe this year’s final? Back then Munich were hoping to avoid defeat in two consecutive finals having been defeated by Chelsea the previous year (similar for Liverpool this time round, I wonder?), while Dortmund were looking to win their second Champions League title after beating Juventus 3-1 in 1997. One further nice link to this season’s final is that Dortmund’s manager was Jürgen Klopp who is of course the current Liverpool manager and who will be hoping for a better result than 2013.

Now, it is claimed that the 2013 Champions League final had viewing figures of 320 million people – an amazing number which included myself watching at 4:00 in the morning in a bar in Hong Kong!

Right, here’s the podcast from just after the final in May 2013.

Introduction

Congratulations to Bayern Munich for winning their fifth European Cup/Champions League title after defeating Borussia Dortmund 2-1 at Wembley. In this week’s main report we look at some of the words and phrases from the 2013 Champions League final (To choke; to bottle, to press; to run out of steam; to break up the team). Now we have vocabulary support (in bold) appearing at the foot of this report.

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

To choke

This was the third Champions League final for Bayern Munich in four years having been beaten in 2010 by Inter Milan and then they lost again at home to Chelsea last year. With many of their starting XI also having been involved in World Cup and European Championship semi-final defeats with Germany there was a fear that the team would choke again; not be able to win under pressure. The 2-1 victory has done much to shed this choker description.

To bottle

When Arjen Robben missed chance after chance against Dortmund in the first half of the Champions League final last weekend we all thought that the Dutchman had yet again bottled it. After all, he had missed a penalty in the final last year and failed to convert a one-on-one at a crucial time in the 2010 World Cup final. This time, however, the Dutchman came good in the second half making one and scoring the other in the Bavarian‘s 2-1 win. Robben can no longer be accused of bottling it.

To play a pressing game

Dortmund became everyone’s favourite second team after their Champions League exploits this season. They knocked out Manchester City, defeated Real Madrid and were involved in some amazing games in this season’s competition. To do this they mainly used a pressing game, that is, they put the opposing team under pressure when they had the ball. Sometimes they would do this high up the pitch when the opposition’s defenders received the ball from the keeper, while other times they simply waited until the opponents ...