The Language of Football: Part 1

A toe-dip into the strange argot of the modern-day football commentator.


Big Ask

As in, “Jamie, can you possibly suppress your familial loyalties for the sake of professional impartiality when conducting your near-forensic level analysis of games involving Super Pompey?”
Jamie: “It’s a big ask, Richard.”

A surreal notion, this one. Its origin is unknown to me, but it’s presumably a contraction of: “That’s a very big thing to ask someone to do and expect them to achieve.”

In view of the overabundance of profound, luminous insights that most pundits are aching to share with us, such time-saving grammatical techniques are perhaps forgivable.

Not to be confused with:
Big Ron - ex football pundit, presently engaged in a legal battle with the 1970s for ruining his media career.