BBC 6分钟英语 为什么每个人都喜欢弱者

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BBC learning english dot com. Hello.

This is Minute English from BBC Learning English.

I'm Neil, and I'm Georgie. Whether it's Cinderella, david and Goliath or the Rocky Movies, we all

love an underdog story. The underdog in a situation is the person who seems least as likely to win.

Nevertheless, with some luck and plenty of hard work, the underdog sometimes ends up the winner.

Sport is full of underdog stories, minor teams and sports people who play with courage and end up beating the superstars and multi million pound clubs.

But if you were given a choice between your team being the favorite to win or being the underdog, it's pretty obvious you'd want to be the favorite, right?

Well, yes, being the favorite gives a team confidence, but maybe the fact that no one expects the underdog to win is actually an advantage, which could help them to a surprise victory.

In this program, we'll be hearing about an underdog football club doing just that, and as usual, we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary, too.

Great. But 1st, I have a question for you, georgie.

One of the biggest underdog stories in sports history happened in the 20, 1516 English football season, when a little known club beat top clubs like Manchester City and Liverpool, overcoming odds of 5000 to one to win the premier league.

But which club? Was it? A Charles and Athletic b Lester City, or C Crystal Palace?

I'll guess it was Crystal Palace.

OK, georgie, I'll reveal the correct answer at the end of the program.

The English Football Premier League is a good place to find underdogs.

Each season, the three best clubs in the 2nd League are promoted up, while the three weakest Premier League clubs are relegated down.

One club that knows all about relegation is Looton Town FC.

In 2009, looton Town were relegated entirely from the English League.

Slowly, their fortunes improved, however, and they've now become the 1st English team to progress from non league to the Premier League.

Here's looton fan Alex talking about his team's chances to BBC radio program mental muscle.

But some of these elite Premier League clubs will look down the nose at us and just think, we shouldn't be there.

And we are there on merit, and we just don't approve of this season.

So we are the underdog, certainly financially, but on the pitch.

I don't think we will be.

Alex thinks some of the rich Premier League clubs look down their noses at Luton.

If you look down your nose at someone, you think you're better than them.

But underdog's Luton have done better than expected, even beating some of the big clubs, like Newcastle United.

The question is, how is there something about being the underdog that improves a team's chances of winning?

To answer that, sports psychologist Julian Cook spoke to BBC radio program Mental Muscle.

So you can find that when the newly promoter team comes up, they've got high confidence because they've just come from a season of winning, so they've got the belief that they can do it.

But on the flip side, it's just as important to look at the top dog's performance.

Who everyone expects them to win.

They're playing the newly promoted teams.

We might think of mad City, who might be about to come up against a within time.

So what we can see from that is what in so called dilitchter is known as choking, and that's when pressure gets to an individual or a team and they underperform.

Clubs newly promoted to the Premier League are used to winning, and start the season confidently.

On the flip side, they have to play much stronger teams than before.

The phrase on the flip side is used to show the opposite, less positive side of something.

Of course, it's not just the underdog playing.

There are also top dogs, the most successful or powerful person or team.

No one expects underdogs to win, and this gives them freedom to relax and play naturally.

Top dogs, on the other hand, experience a lot of expectation, and this sometimes leads to choking, a sports time which describes the failure of a player to perform their best because of psychological pressure or social expectation.

Choking causes teams and players to underperform, to perform worse than expected.

It's also true that neutral fans, people watching a match when their team isn't playing, tend to support the underdog as well.

In football, it's tough at the top.

I think it's time to reveal the answer to your question.

Neil. You asked me about the famous Premier League winning underdogs of the 2015 to 16 football season, and I guessed it was Crystal Palace, which was the wrong answer, I'm afraid Georgie.

In fact,

it was Lester City, nicknamed The Foxes, who became the unexpected

champions of the Premier League. OK, let's recap the

vocabulary we've learned from this program about the underdog, the person in a competitional situation who seems least likely to win.

If you look down your nose at someone you think you are superior to them, the phrase on the flip side is used to show

the opposite, less positive or less popular side of something.

The top dog is an informal way of saying the most successful or powerful person in a group.

In sports, choking happens when a player or team failed to perform their best because of psychological pressure or social expectation.

And finally, the verb to underperform means to perform worse than expected.

Once again, our 6 min are up.

Remember to join us again next time for more topical discussion and useful vocabulary here at Six Minute English.

Goodbye for now. Bye. 6 min English from BBC, learning English dot com.

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