Hearing commentator Andres Cantor shout “goal” is one of the premier aspects of watching football on a Spanish broadcast.
Fortunately for football fans, we’ll get to hear long goals and plenty of other popular terms when the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup gets underway in July.
Though the Mexican women’s national team didn’t qualify for this cycle, there will be plenty of opportunities to hear commentating when the U.S. women’s national team, Spain and more take the field in Australia and New Zealand.
Here are some Spanish terms and phrases you should know ahead of the quadrennial tournament, which will be exclusively broadcast and streamed in Spanish on Telemundo and Peacock:
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Píntala De Amarillo
This phrase means “Paint her yellow” in English. It is used to refer to someone being given a yellow card by the referee following a foul.
Túnel
The túnel is the Spanish soccer term for when a player passes the ball between an opponent’s feet. That is the equivalent to a nutmeg in English.
La Leña
This technically means firewood but in the context of football, la leña means to foul someone badly.
Bicicleta
The first term that may automatically come to mind is a bicycle kick, but there’s another meaning as well. It can also refer to a step over, a useful dribbling move by an attacker to escape a defender.
Chilena
This term is the popular association to a bicycle kick in Spanish, which is when a player attempts an acrobatic overhead kick with their back facing the goal.
Cerrar la Pinza
In English, this means "to close the clamp,” which refers to the match-defining goal in a close game.
Cazagoles
When someone describes a player with this phrase, it means they’re a goal poacher. Their positioning in the final third will see them get on the end of easy tap-in style goals.
Tiki-taka
Tiki-taka is a style of play and movement that emphasizes short, quick passes that authorizes teams to maintain possession for large portions of the match. Barcelona during the 2000s and 2010s have exemplified this in extraordinary ways.
Les dieron un baile
This phrase means “to give them a dance,” referring to a one-sided match where one team completely dominated the other.
