6 Minute English / Why everyone loves the underdog

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

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 sportspeople 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 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 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.