This week’s weekly football post explains what to ride their luck means.

* Find out more about this phrase by reading the transcript below.

* You can also find many more examples of soccer vocabulary by going to our football cliches page here and our huge football glossary here.

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Ride their luck

This week’s English for football phrase is ‘ride their luck’. The ‘their’ in this phrase refers to the football team being described. ‘Their’ could be substituted by ‘his’ of ‘her’ when talking about an individual player, although this is not common. The phrase is used to mean a team has been lucky to escape losing or going behind. The opponent has had some good goal-scoring chances, perhaps hit the woodwork, their striker might have missed a sitter, a last pass may have been inaccurate. The team described as riding their luck has been extremely lucky to still be in the game. They may go on to win the game or score. Ride their luck.

* Example: England needed just a draw to reach the final and rode their luck with Gakuto Notsuda hitting the bar for Japan in the second half. (U21 game – The Guardian)

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