Underdogs, curses and ‘Neymaresque’ histrionics: what’s got us talking during this year's World Cup?

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The research team here at Cambridge have been following the language used during the World Cup closely and can reveal the top words and themes to come from this year’s tournament, including underdogs and the ‘Curse of the Holder‘. For the first time this year, our research into the language of sport also included an open call to fans to give us their own views on the national teams taking part. This resulted in ‘young’ England, Argentina’s ‘Messi’ and ‘diving’ Brazil all featuring heavily in the People’s Corpus.

On Sunday, the ‘formidable‘ France claimed victory over the ‘dark-horse’ Croatian team to become the winners of the 2018 FIFA World Cup™ in Russia. But which teams came out on top in the media? Building on similar research conducted during the 2014 World Cup, our researchers mined over 12 million words of media coverage, to analyse the language used when discussing the various teams over the course of this year’s tournament. Comparison with the language collected in 2014 shows that, whilst traditionally successful teams such as Brazil have gone from ‘stylish’ to ‘nervous’ and Argentina from having ‘flair’ to ‘struggling’, World Cup 2018 underdogs such as England have gone from being ‘inexperienced’ to ‘confident’.

Key themes from this year’s World Cup

There has been no shortage of surprises during this year’s competition, and this shines through in the language data. Expressions such as ‘premature exit’ reflect that several of the predicted favourites haven’t fared as well as expected, with the odd ‘unforgivable blunder’ making an appearance, too. The data reflects that several teams have defied expectations – the word ‘underdogs’ features frequently in media reports, along with related language like ‘plucky’, ‘determined’, and ‘punch above their weight’ also making an appearance.

As fans ‘root‘ for their home teams, the verb ‘overcome‘ is commonly found alongside words such as ‘obstacles’, ‘hurdles‘ and ‘adversity‘. Even England’s long-standing ‘penalty curse‘ has been ‘overcome‘, whereas previous champions Germany fell victim to the ‘curse of the holders‘. Despite the introduction Video Assisted Referee (VAR) technology for the first time, bad behaviour still abounds; the word ‘histrionics’ is prominent in the data across the media and the with the fans – often found alongside adjectives such as ‘ridiculous‘, ‘headline-grabbing‘, and ‘amateurish‘. Thanks to the particularly dramatic moves from a forward on the Brazil nation team, a new term has even been coined: ‘neymaresque’.

Top 3 words per team

As well as analysing the language used by journalists and media commentators, we’ve been asking fans to submit the words they would use to describe their national teams.
It’s been great to see the correlation between the language used by the media and the descriptive words submitted by football fans. We’ve combined these two datasets to select the three words most strongly associated with each team!

Team Words
Argentina Messi
  scraped
  struggled
   
Australia head home
  bow out
  failed
   
Belgium eased
  star-studded
  cruised
   
Brazil favourite(s)
  nervous
  expect
   
Colombia dangerous
  unsporting
  struggled
   
Costa Rica eliminated
  suffered
  Navas
   
Croatia dark horse
  dominate
  impress
   
Denmark penalty
  propel
  concede
   
Egypt happy
  hope
  lack
   
England Southgate
  confident
  fresh
   
France formidable
  dramatic
  lucky
   
Germany upset
  stunned
  eliminated
   
Iceland debutants
  surprise
  newcomer
   
Iran underdog
  ambitious
  VAR
   
Japan heartbroken
  emotional
  clean
   
Mexico thumped
  thrashed
  stunned
   
Morocco fined
  eliminated
  upset
   
Nigeria fail
  struggle
  kit
   
Panama pitiful
  Minnows
  bully
   
Peru struggle
  missed
  waste
   
Poland fail
  suffer
  concede
   
Portugal thrilling
  hat-trick
  Ronaldo
   
Russia low-ranking
  host
  fans
   
Saudi Arabia happy
  defeat
  thrashing
   
Senegal yellow cards
  partying
  stunned
   
Serbia controversial
  gesture
  dominate
   
South Korea plucky
  skill
  hope
   
Spain sack
  frustrate
  fail
   
Sweden impressive
  clinched
  dominate
   
Switzerland battle
  held
  secure
   
Tunisia redeemed
  failed
  keeper
   
Uruguay dangerous
  success
  defence

Find out how you can bring sport psychology into the language learning classroom by checking out this article by Christine Muir.