Enjoying the beautiful game in the USA is a multicultural experience. When I first moved to LA, matches were available to me on about 5 different channels, mostly in Spanish. But these days I can turn on my telly and scroll through no fewer than eleven channels to get my football fix in English, Spanish, and Italian. And the bonus is that I can find football at any hour of the day rather than strictly on a weekend afternoon. This has resulted in football gluttony on my part, and that has familiarized me with lots of different standard phrases that I hear the commentators use.

Here are a few of my favorites.

¡¡¡ Golazo !!! This is a favorite phrase of the Spanish language commentators used to indicate that a miraculous goal has been scored by means of a spectacular bicycle kick executed while the striker was being undressed by three defenders and also facing the dugout. Unfortunately, the passion of the commentators often results in this phrase being used for less impressive goals like penalty kicks, a team's sixth goal on the night, or a scrappy tap-in by a man on his way to falling down.

No hay tiempo para más: This phrase has a nice poetry to it, in my opinion. The commentators of Mexican games use this to indicate that the whistle has blown at the end of either half, but it's simply a nicer than saying "That's it."

The defence were at sixes and sevens: This statement indicates that the defence is a total mess, and the phrase goes back to medieval times (by some accounts) when dice games were very popular, and betting on a six or seven was terribly risky. The phrase has stuck with the English language through prose and poetry by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and O'Henry, among many others.

That was a cynical tackle: My first impression upon hearing this phrase, which is lately very popular with English commentators, is that a tackle cannot be any such thing. A tackle can neither be cynical nor jaded nor optimistic nor friendly. A tackle cannot have these traits. But I came to understand from watching game after game and hearing this phrase time after time that a "cynical tackle" is an unnecessarily harsh tackle, where the man executing it has usually resorted to rough play over finesse and style to get the ball. Cynical tackles often result in yellow cards.

The ball was kept out by a coat of paint: This phrase is akin to "He missed it by a hair." It's usually employed by a commentator to describe a ball bouncing off the inside of the crossbar and NOT making across the goal line. Sometimes I've heard it used by American commentators when the ball slides just past the post, but that's just silly. The only way the coat of paint on the crossbar or goalpost can come into play is if the ball bounces off the interior of the "woodwork."

He had the woodwork to thank for it: You'll notice that I put the term "woodwork" in quotes in the previous sentence. That's because neither the goalposts nor the crossbar is made of wood at all. This term is merely a hangover from olden times, and when the goalkeeper has the woodwork to thank for a save, what the commentator means is that the 'keeper never would have got to the ball, but it was kept from crossing the goal line by hitting the crossbar or goalpost.

It was lobbed in to the far stick: This phrase is a new favorite of mine because I rarely hear the word stick used in place of the word post, and I suspect that only Scottish commentators will use this variation. A lob is a kick that lightly lifts the ball up and floats it down again, and a free kick will often be lobbed into the throngs of attacking players waiting in the box to score.

He knew nothing about it: When a ball passes right by a player or bounces off a random bodypart when the player wasn't looking, the commentator often uses this phrase. It's an implication that the player involved either wasn't paying attention at all or was simply very very lucky. Sometimes it's used when a striker scores with an unceremonious touch on the ball off the outside of his boot, and the look on his face shows that he had actually intended a pass or a clearance rather than a shot on goal.

That caught him counting the blades of grass: This ungracious phrase is often directed at goalkeepers when they miss a ball outright. The 'keeper may have lunged at the hurling ball and ended on his face, or he may have been caught "flat footed" and standing still. Either way, no goalkeeper wants to be caught counting blades of grass because it means that not only has the ball gone into the net, it has done so because of his own failure to react properly.

Fuorigioco: This term meaning "offside" can take on a life of its own in an Italian game. Counting the number of times it's uttered and the players' reactions to the call makes a fun drinking game* to play as you watch!

Mischia in area: This phrase is one of my favorites from Serie A because the word "mischia" is just fun to say. The phrase equates to one of my favorite English terms "A bit of silliness in the box." A similar phrase "fischia la mischia" is also really fun to say, and it means that the ref has blown his whistle because of silliness in the box.

* The Treble do NOT advocate drinking alcoholic beverages. Try the game with your favorite soft drink. :)