Why everyone loves the underdog ⏲️ 6 Minute English

Hello. This is 6 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 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 favourite

to win or being the underdog,

it's pretty obvious you'd want to be the favourite, right?

Well yes,

being the favourite gives the 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 programme,

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 first I have a question for you, Georgie.

One of the biggest underdog stories in sports history

happened in the 2015-16 English football season

when a little known club beat top clubs like Manchester City and Liverpool

overcoming odds of 5000-1 to win the Premier League,

but which club was it? a) Charlton Athletic

b) Leicester 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 programme.

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

Each season the three best clubs in their second league are promoted up

while the three weakest Premier League clubs are relegated down.

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

In 2009,

Luton Town were relegated entirely from the English league.

Slowly, their fortunes improved

however, and they have now become the first English team to progress from non-league

to the Premier League.

Here's Luton fan, Alex, talking about his team's chances to BBC radio programme,

Mental Muscle:

But some of these Elite Premier League clubs will look down their nose at us

and just think we shouldn't be there, and we are there on merit

and we've just gotta prove it 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 will look down their noses at Luton.

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

But underdogs 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,

Gillian Cook, spoke to BBC

Radio programme Mental Muscle.

So, you could find that when

the newly-promoted 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 dogs' performance

who everyone expects them to win they're playing the newly-promoted team.

So we might think of Man City

who might be about to come up against Luton Town.

So, what we can see from that is what in psychology literature

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 term 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 is 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 Premiere League winning underdogs

of the 2015-16 football season

and I guessed it was Crystal Palace.

Which was the wrong answer,

I'm afraid, Georgie. In fact, it was Leicester City, nicknamed

the foxes, who became the unexpected champions of the Premier League.

OK, let's recap the vocabulary

we've learned from this programme about the underdog,

the person in a competition or 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 fail 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 six minutes are up.

Remember to join us again next time

for more topical discussion and useful vocabulary, here at 6 Minute

English. Goodbye for now! Bye!