This football language podcast looks at football language connected with corner kicks – including ‘inswinger’. The transcript for this podcast is available below, and you can also check out our huge glossary of footballing phrases here. Visit our site to access all our previous posts and podcasts, and if you have any suggestions or questions please contact us at [email protected] or leave a question or comment on our forum. (DB=Damon)

Inswinger – Football Language Podcast: Season 2021-22

DB: Hello there everyone. We hope you are all well and enjoying the football wherever you are.

My name’s Damon, one half of the languagecaster team, and I’m based in Tokyo, which is enjoying some lovely spring weather at the moment. Damian, the other member of the languagecaster team is in London, and he’s recently posted a great podcast on the language of football on the pitch, when you are playing the game. Well worth a listen!

On this short podcast, I’ll be talking about corners and some of the language connected to this part of the game.

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

DB: Yes, you are listening to languagecaster.com and that message was in French. Send in an audio of ‘you are listening to languagecaster.com’ in your language and we’ll add it to our show. The more languages the better!

Set Piece

Right, a corner, or corner kick is a set piece. You will often hear ‘set piece’ in match commentary and it refers to free kicks and corner kicks. A set piece means that the ball is set on the floor and it also means that a team has had time to plan and prepare special moves. Some teams or players are set piece specialists, meaning they are very good at turning free kicks and corners into goals.

Here’s a BBC report with an example of ‘set piece‘ – a game between Tottenham and Arsenal in 2020: ‘Arsenal were undone by a routine set piece as Alderweireld glanced in Son’s corner.‘

Dead Ball Situation

Another way of describing a set piece is to say it is a dead ball situation. And we can also combine it with specialist – a dead ball specialist. This is a player, for example, who is very good at free kicks or corners.

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Inswinger

OK, now let’s focus on one type of set piece or dead ball situation, the corner. We can describe corners as inswingers or outswingers. An inswinger is hit so that it curves towards the goal, it swings in towards the goal. So if the corner is taken from the left of the goal, the area where the left-sided defenders would be, you need a left-footed player to curl the ball up and in towards the goal. This type of corner often leads to a ‘glancing header‘, which is a header that just slightly touches the ball.

Here’s another example from the BBC; this time a match from 2007 – Watford vs Liverpool: ‘Watford’s best hope of a goal looked like coming from a set-piece, with Malky Mackay glancing a header wide from a Stewart inswinger.’

Outswinger