2-nil and 3-3: how to say football scores in English

Stuart Cook June 13, 2012 About English 26

The Euro 2012 tournament in Ukraine and Poland has begun so now is an ideal time to look at how we speak about football scores in English.

On television and radio the results are read in a straightforward way: England one, France one; Holland one, Germany two, etc.

However, we use a different style when we speak informally about scores.

Draws

If the two teams have an equal number of goals at the end of the match we say it’s a draw, or that the teams drew.

When speaking about a 0-0 result, we can say any of the following:

It was a nil-nil draw.
It was nil-nil.
They drew nil-nil.

Let’s say the final score was 1-1. We could say:

It was one-all.
It was a one-all draw.
It was one-one.
They drew one-one.

The Poland-Greece game on the first day of the Euro 2012 competition finished 1-1. We could use any of the above or we could say:

Poland and Greece drew one-one.
Poland drew one-one with Greece.

Wins

Another early game in the Euros finished Russia 4 Czech Republic 1.

For this result we could say any of the following:

Russia won four-one.
It was four-one to Russia.
Russia won by four goals to one. (a little more formal)

Away wins

In an English Premier League match there is a home team and an away team. The home team is always written first, regardless of the final score:

Chelsea 0 Newcastle 2 (We see that Chelsea were the home team because they’re written first.)

However, when we speak about the result the winner comes first and we put the ‘two’ before the ‘nil’:

Chelsea 0 Newcastle 2

Newcastle won two-nil.
~~Newcastle won nil to two~~.

It was two-nil to Newcastle.
Newcastle beat Chelsea two-nil.

We could also say:

Chelsea lost 2-0 to Newcastle.

How to speak about a result after penalties

When a match goes to penalties after extra-time we say the team won on penalties.

Let’s say the final score was Barcelona 2 Real Madrid 2 and then in the penalty shoot-out Barcelona scored five penalties and Real four.

We’d say:

It was two-two and Barcelona won five-four on penalties.

You should now be fully equipped to talk about football scores in English. Enjoy the rest of EURO 2012 if you’re watching it!

If you found this article helpful please share it with friends. Thanks!

By Stuart Cook

Stuart is an English teacher and runs the Speakspeak website. He currently lives in Prague and has been teaching for over 25 years. ⎜ Get Stuart's e-books

26 Comments

sam - June 15, 2012, 10:16 am Reply

It was interesting ,and I learnt a lot from it!
thanks alot stuart
- Stuart Cook - June 15, 2012, 7:13 pm Reply
  
  Thanks, Sam.
  - Anonymous - December 24, 2015, 5:42 am Reply
    
    Thanks a lot Stuart.how do we use the words ‘be defeated and be beaten’?
- Júnia - February 6, 2019, 5:25 pm Reply
  
  So helpful…thanks a lot
khalid - June 20, 2012, 4:13 pm Reply

Yeah, it was useful , i like the part which talk about Real Madrid.
Well, Thank you
Anar - November 21, 2012, 11:34 am Reply

Thank you for interesting materials. I speak a lot about football with my foreign work -mates. I have looking materials for a long time.
hanita - February 2, 2013, 10:36 am Reply

thanks for your useful info about football scores.i was looking for that . how can i connect you? because i’m an eng learner.
Nhi - March 26, 2013, 12:40 am Reply

Thanks a lot!
Friend - January 30, 2014, 9:33 pm Reply

thank you it was so useful for me thanks a million
Songyi - June 15, 2014, 3:07 pm Reply

Great and very helpful material for esl learners. Thank you so much. Would it be wrong if I said ‘zero’ instead of ‘nil’?
- Stuart Cook - June 16, 2014, 9:06 am Reply
  
  Songyi,
  Technically it’s not incorrect to say zero, but it sounds very unusual. No one in Britain would say that the result was four-zero.
  
  Use zero when you’re speaking about the temperature: it was four below zero last night.
  - Tom - September 18, 2017, 10:55 am Reply
    
    Hi Stuart,
    
    everytime I watch sports, they say 2-0 – two to nothing. Is it only an American thing or just an ice-hockey thing? I also teach English and I have been teaching this.
    - Stuart Cook - September 27, 2017, 8:55 am Reply
      
      Hi, Tom
      I’ve heard commentators in Scotland use ‘two-nothing’, but nowhere else. Admittedly, I don’t watch American sports, so I can’t say.
Pia - June 23, 2014, 1:53 am Reply

It is very useful. I was looking for everyday version of expressions.
Thank you so much!!
Jony - November 1, 2014, 5:54 am Reply

Thank you. This is very useful for me 🙂
Jony - November 1, 2014, 5:55 am Reply

Thanks Stuart. It is very useful for me 🙂 a great job
Vivek_Kubaji - May 27, 2016, 6:56 am Reply

Thanks Stuart. This was helpful to me as well 🙂
Could you also add a few examples where you include the tournament name. While speaking it is usually not required but sometimes in a chat it would be needed.
shruti - August 13, 2018, 1:46 am Reply

hi Stuart,
I just want to ask that how do we pronounce 0-2.
- Stuart Cook - August 16, 2018, 12:25 pm Reply
  
  Two-nil. Always the higher score first.
Anonymous - September 25, 2018, 4:35 am Reply

Thank you! Cleared a lot of doubts
Fatemeh - July 13, 2019, 6:47 pm Reply

Thanks a lot. It was useful
Paulina Riquelme - August 25, 2021, 11:23 pm Reply

I found i very useful but I wish to know if they say it the same in the US and Australia.
- Paulina R - August 25, 2021, 11:25 pm Reply
  
  I found it*
Anonymous - November 23, 2021, 11:09 am Reply

Very useful ! thanks
Will Jones - April 10, 2022, 2:37 pm Reply

In 2020s parlance, certainly in text form, scores are increasingly being reported American-style. In the post above you see that we report the winning team first, regardless of home or away. Scores are now increasingly being spoken of in “home vs away” terms, such as “0-2”. Also there’s a thing whereby people report the score in terms of, if their team scores first, they’ll report it as “1-0” and if they concede first, even if they’re away, they’ll report it as “0-1”. [Link deleted]
sara Azimi - May 13, 2023, 1:54 pm Reply

Thank you very much. I learned a lot.