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2026 World Cup Language Podcast: One-way traffic
Day nine of the 2026 World Cup saw one of the dark horses, Turkey, knocked out of the competition and we are going to look at the phrases, ‘one-way traffic‘ and ‘eliminate‘. You can read the transcript for this podcast below, while you can also check out our glossary of footballing phrases here and visit our site to access all our previous posts and podcasts. If you have any suggestions or questions about the phrase or our podcast then you can contact us here.
Hello
DF: Hello everyone. This is Damian from the Learn English through Football team and I hope you are all well and enjoying the World Cup. Today I am in Monterrey in the north of Mexico where the weather is much hotter and drier than Mexico City and I will be going to see Japan versus Tunisia this evening in the Monterrey Stadium.
Now you might be able to hear some noise in the background, that’s the six-lane freeway behind me – a lot of traffic noise indeed, so apologies for that.
Eliminate
Now, this is Day 9 of our World Cup Language Podcasts – yesterday Damon explained the phrase, ‘gift’ as the referee gifted South Africa a penalty against the Czech Republic. And today I am going to explain a couple of phrases from the Turkey versus Paraguay game which saw one of the dark horses, Turkey, knocked out of the competition after losing to Paraguay. Turkey had previously been beaten by Australia so it is impossible for them to get through to the knock-out stages; so we can say that Turkey have been knocked out of the tournament. Another word to describe this situation is ‘eliminate‘; Turkey have been eliminated from the competition. This means that the team can go no further in this competition – they will have to go home. The fact that Turkey have been eliminated is a big shock as they were expected to do well but they also failed to score in two games despite having over 60 shots. And this leads us to another phrase: one-way traffic.
Stinger: You are listening to the Learn English Through Football Podcast.com (in Turkish)
One-way traffic
DF: Yes, that message was in Turkish and no doubt Turkish fans will be very upset with their team’s elimination. Let’s take a closer look at the phrase, ‘one-way traffic‘. In football this means that one team is constantly attacking the other team and that they don’t allow their opponents to attack or come out of their own half. In fact it is difficult for the defending team to move up the field and carry out any attacks themselves. In the Paraguay defeat, Turkey conceded after only a minute but then attacked constantly the Paraguayan defence. And here’s what the BBC had to say in their match report:
Almost from that point onwards, however, it was one-way traffic as Turkey piled forward in search of an equaliser (BBC.co.uk, June 19 2026)
This means that Turkey kept attacking in the hope of scoring an equaliser. The report also uses the phrase, ‘pile forward’ which is another way of saying constantly attacking – we can imagine that all the players from the team moved forward in search of a goal.
OK, let’s have a look at some of the statistics from this game. So, Turkey had an xG of 2.12, whereas Paraguay had only 0.32. Turkey had 32 shots, Paraguay only 7 and Turkey had 5 of those shots on target to Paraguay’s 2. So, we can see that Turkey were the dominant side – they had 79% possession so it was one-way traffic throughout the game they failed to score and they’ve een eliminated.
Stinger: You are listening to the Learn English Through Football Podcast.com (in Spanish)
Contact
DF: Yes, you are listening to the Learn English through Football podcast, or as we used to be known Languagecaster, and that message was in Spanish.
Now don’t forget, if you want to get in contact with us or ask a football-language question or you have a comment on our show or about the World Cup, then just come along to our site or go to our World Cup forum or you can write to us at: contact@learnenglishthroughfootball.com. And while you are visiting our site you can also check out our glossary of football terms, expressions and clichés – there are hundreds of them – all about the beautiful game of football.
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