How to Talk about Football (Soccer) in Chinese

Do you like to play football? Or perhaps you like to watch football games?
Football is popular in China, and especially among men. Even though the male Chinese football team has not found much successful yet, the Chinese audience enjoys watching their games.

Perhaps you would like to converse about football with your Chinese friends? In this post we look at some basic football vocabulary and phrases.

First of all, how do you say football in Chinese? Football is called 足zú球qiú, and a football fan is 足zú球qiú迷mí. 球 means “ball”, so a football player is called 球qiú员yuán, and the team is called 球qiú队duì. Since 队 means “team”, you can also use it to express for example the Chinese team: 中zhōng国guó队duì.

Team Brasil

bā xī duì 巴西队

Team Germany

dé guó duì 德国队

Team Argentina

ā gēn tíng duì 阿根廷队

Team Italy

yì dà lì duì 意大利队

Team Uruguay

wū lā guī duì 乌拉圭队

You might know the character 赛 which means “game” or “match”. You can combine it with “football” to get the Chinese word for a football game: 足zú球qiú赛sài.. The character 赛 is also used in the following football related terms:

Qualifying game

yù xuǎn sài 预选赛

Semi-final

bàn jué sài 半决赛

Final

jué sài 决赛

Overtime

jiā shí sài 加时赛

Friendly match

yǒu yì sài 友谊赛

Perhaps the most famous football competition is the FIFA World Cup, right? The official name for the FIFA World Cup in Chinese is 国guó际jì足zú联lián世shì界jiè杯bēi, but often we just call it 世shì界jiè杯bēi. Another popular competition is the UEFA European Football Championship, or 欧ōu洲zhōu足zú球qiú锦jǐn标biāo赛sài. We can shorten this too, and just say 欧ōu洲zhōu杯bēi.

Now that you know some basic football vocabulary, you can ask your friends like this:

Watching the football game, you might want to cheer on the team you like, right? Try this:

And once the game over, you might want to tell your friends how it ended:

冠军 here means champion, but you can use the simpler 第dì一yī名míng as well. Finally, let’s have a look at some extra vocabulary:

欧ōu洲zhōu杯bēi is in full swing right now, so go and watch the games with your Chinese friends and try to use the words you learned today!

This is the accompanying blog post for our intermediate lesson “Watching a Football Game“.