The Football Fans Episode - A Crossover with Craig

You're listening to the Footglish podcast Love Football Learn English. This episode is a unique crossover published on both the Footglish podcast as well as English podcast. Did Craig and Sdenek grow up loving football?

Should football and politics be mixed up? And what does a fair weather fan mean? Hello everybody and welcome. If you've just clicked play and you're wondering what's going on here, who's this

guy who's that guy, maybe we should introduce ourselves first of all. Now this is a crossover podcast which means that it will be published on Denix listeners and viewers on his Footglish podcast and also hopefully teacher Zennec on YouTube. Is that right Zennec? Yes that is correct. Hello, hello Craig how are you doing? Doing very well, very excited to speak about football with you

because if you want to learn English and you're interested in football then Zennick is your guy, he's your man, so I'm interested to get into our conversation. But first let's introduce ourselves. So would you like to go first? Oh sure, thank you. So my name is Denek, I'm from the Czech Republic or Czechia if you want and I'm an English teacher and I am very passionate about football

as well. So these days I try to teach English through football, not only but yeah I've done it all. But this is like one of one of my let's say niches that I like to do because it's it's really interesting I believe. How long have you been doing the podcast and how long have you been teaching English? So I've been yeah I've been teaching English ever since I graduated from

university which was back in 2011 I believe so yeah it's been it's been a while 15 years I don't know if it qualifies for a veteran teacher probably not but I'm getting there and yeah as far as the podcasting goes I first started doing the next English podcast it's still it still exists but that was

sort of my personal project. It allowed me to improve my own English as a teacher, which is very important if English is not your first language. So that's the first podcast I did and inspired by Luke's English podcast. I'm sure you know Luke as well. Yes, yes, I know Luke. Yes. Many podcasters were inspired, especially English teachers were inspired by Luke. Yes, exactly.

So I created this Denix English podcast. You see what I did there? Yes. And then the food-glish podcast, I don't even know when I started it. I think it must have been I think a year or two after COVID or something. I just had this idea that I could, to be fair, I've had similar ideas in the past. For instance, my master's degree thesis that I had to write

was on the language of football commentators. So I've always tried to find this. Oh really? You can do that? Yeah, I didn't know. Yeah, they were actually quite, quite happy that someone came up with something different,

right? So, I mean, because it was like, I chose this linguistic path, right? So I was exploring the syntax and what else was it? Semantics of the vocabulary of the commentators. And it was, it was. I made this terrible, terrible experience quite, quite relatively, I don't want to say enjoyable because writing a master's thesis is always a drag, but I made it work somehow.

Because you're interested in the topic, which makes a lot of sense. So the Footglitch podcast is where you can listen to Zennick's take on football and also I believe the website is teacherzennick.com. That's right. So for English podcast listeners, that's where you can find and we'll repeat these at the end as well. And for your listeners, if you haven't seen me before,

my name is Craig and I'm originally from London. I was born and bred in London. My formative years were spent there, but then I came to live in Spain a long time ago, nearly 30 years ago and I've been living here in Valencia ever since. And I teach English at EnglishCraig.com.

That's where you can find my information and my free Zoom chat if you're interested in my courses. And also we have a podcast at inglesepodcast.com. And I do that podcast with a co-host,

which is why it might be a bit strange for my listeners coming in and seeing you Zenic online, but it's lovely to have you. So may I ask you a question too?

Go ahead, of course. In Glass podcast, so does it mean that you've focused primarily on Spanish speakers or? Good question. Originally we did.

So when we started the podcast, which was over 10 years ago, it was mainly aimed at Spanish speakers. Although these days it's open for everybody. So we have listeners all over the world. But it was originally for Spanish speakers.

It was started as a hobby back in the day. And yeah, we've we've been doing it for over 10 years. So it's quite a it's quite a catalog of of all sorts of grammar and vocabulary and yeah, different different topics over the years.

Lovely. So. One thing I did want to ask you, many people develop a passion for football very often because of their dads, I think their dads take them to games

then it gets passed on from granddad to dad. And that was the way I got interested. And as soon as I saw you wearing your Arsenal shirt on a previous interview, I was very interested to talk to you

because that was my team back in the day. And I want to say it still is, but I'm not a staunch fan of Arsenal. A staunch fan is someone who's very hardcore,

somebody who follows every game and knows exactly who's playing for the team and everything. and I dropped my interest for football in general years ago

and if you want me can talk about that. But I was a very, very hardcore Arsenal supporter when I lived in London and that came from my dad. And when you say hardcore supporter,

sorry for interrupting you, does it mean that you were an ultra as well or? Well, let me tell you the story, it's not very long. I have a very close friend who I'm still in touch with,

I've known him since we were six years old And we went to Arsenal together as 15 year olds, 14 year olds, 15 year olds. And he was going through a difficult time with his parents and personal issues. And I wouldn't say he was a hooligan.