Dictionary365: P is for Penalty, Poland, Post, Press, Price tag and Puskas

Surprising lack of football clubs beginning with P, but there’s penalty and post, which play a bloody big part in the football.

Panic – One of the very worst things that can afflict pretty much anyone associated with football. It can happen to a team, a defender, a referee, a striker bearing down on goal, a manager fearing for his job, a chairman when the transfer deadline is looming. Fans have it quite literally all the time. It might just be the game’s defining currency. Counter-intuitively, the highest amount of recordable panic within a team is, in co-commentator code, ‘a little bit’ of panic.

Pass – The fundamental building block of the game, can be short, quick, long, patient, raking, slide-rule and increasingly these days apparently vertical.

Part and parcel – Literally anything from refereeing mistakes to pressure to missed chances to injuries can and will be described as ‘part and parcel of the game’ by players and managers, often accompanied by a slight shrug. Such a frequent component of press conference linguistics that part and parcel of the game is itself now part and parcel of the game.

It’s part and parcel of the game pic.twitter.com/Mud1SQgV1C

— Bryan’s Gunn (@bryansgunn) January 19, 2023

Pelanty – A penalty, but in a game where Chris Waddle is the co-commentator. Or, if not actually given by the hapless official, a ‘definite pelanty’.

Penalty – A 12-yard shot at goal offered as reward/punishment for a range of offences from the serious right down to the very small and twatty if they happen to occur within the penalty area. If scored, the resultant goal is worth precisely one goal like any other goals unless you need to make one player’s – and very often that player is Harry Kane – scoring record look a bit less good by pretending said goals do not count.

Play-offs – Tremendous way of adding terrifying fun and significance to the latter stages of a season by making the best-placed team outside the automatic promotion places go through hell before, as often as not, getting promoted anyway.

Pluralisation – Curious yet strangely pleasing commentary gambit of pluralising players or clubs when talking about them in general rather than specific terms. The Bergkamps. Your Cantonas. The Manchester Uniteds of this world. Has now spread virulently beyond football into the wider sporting world, especially cricket, and more generally in popular culture, surely reaching its apex with Jason Donovan’s bravura use of the phrase ‘The The Thes’ when describing the 80s music scene in some documentary or other that it is possible we may have dreamt after eating too much cheese.

Poland – The national team most likely to finish third in their group at any major tournament. Have heroically not allowed spending the last 15 years of having the best striker in the world in their team move the needle on this one iota.

Pool – Unnecessary alternative word for group. ‘Pool of death’ doesn’t work at all, except as the title for an episode of Death In Paradise.

Portsmouth – A sobering cautionary tale about what can happen to a football club when you just can’t say no to Harry Redknapp.

Post – The vertical element of the goalframe. Traditionally termed ‘near’ and ‘far’ for landmark purposes but there are still a few students of Ronglish out there keeping first post and second post alive. These people are heroes. The post and its more horizontal cousin the crossbar are both routinely credited with the gift of free will surprisingly often by commentators for what are by definition immovable and inanimate objects. Between them, posts and crossbars have ‘denied’ more goals than VAR could even dream of in a thousand lifetimes.

Press – The apparently new-fangled idea of not just letting opposition defenders pass the ball around under no pressure. Also collective term for that group of people who are biased against your club.

Press, high – Like a press but more modern and sexier and better.

Pressure – Very often the precursor to panic.

Postage stamp – see Top bins. Your youngsters these days wouldn’t even understand the reference, would they? Never posted a letter, have they? The youngsters? These days. All on the Instagrams and TikToks, isn’t it?

Prank – What all players are required by ancient football lore to believe their first international call-up is. “Thought it was some of the lads messing about.”

Price tag – Usually large, occasionally hefty. Very probably eye-catching. Can be an albatross around a player’s neck. But what must be remembered above all is that said price-tag is not the player’s fault.

Puskas – Brilliant old-timey Hungarian footballer who went pleasingly fat immediately after retirement and who now lends his name to an award for the best goal of the year scored in any football anywhere, a task so absurdly and obviously impossible that it’s no great surprise they’ve not yet managed to get it right even once.