The Ball's Vacation: Spanish Football Story (A1)
Learn Spanish through a children's football story set in Seville. Level A1: football vocabulary, why the national team is called La Roja and what el clásico is.
Vacaciones para el balón
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About this article
What you'll learn
Football and playground vocabulary (balón, capitán and capitana, recreo, La Roja, el clásico); phrases for starting a game, calming a group and reacting when something goes wrong; present tense, negation, questions and the imperative with an attached pronoun (¡pásala!); 17 cards
A playground story set in Seville: Luis and Ana argue over who is captain, Mario kicks the ball over the wall and then straight into the school fountain, and the teacher decides the ball needs a holiday. Along the way the story explains why the Spanish national team is called La Roja and why the Real Madrid against Barcelona match is called el clásico. Level A1, for beginners. The learning kit has 17 cards covering football and playground vocabulary, phrases taken from the dialogue, and the present tense, negation, questions and the imperative with an attached pronoun. The story closes with three questions for you to answer in Spanish.
After reading
Article learning block
Phrases, words, grammar, and quick practice from this text.
Phrases for training
Add useful phrases to SRS or mark them as already known.
Venga, chicos
newCome on, guys
Venga encourages a group to start.
Useful in games and conversation.
Hacemos equipos
newLet's make teams
Means dividing players into teams.
Useful for sports and school.
Tenemos un problema
newWe have a problem
Tenemos means we have.
Basic phrase when something goes wrong.
Tranquilos, yo voy
newRelax, I'll go
Tranquilos addresses several people.
Useful when taking responsibility.
se ríen a carcajadas
newthey laugh out loud
A carcajadas means laughing loudly.
Useful for funny scenes.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
Ball
balón
ball (football)
El balón is the big ball you play football with. A small one is una pelota.
The word the whole story turns on; it appears six times.
Recess
recreo
break time / recess
School break when children rest or play.
Useful school vocabulary.
Captain, masculine and feminine
capitán
captain
Capitán is masculine, capitana is feminine. That is exactly what the two children argue about: Luis says yo soy el capitán, Ana answers quiero ser la capitana.
Role words change both ending and article for men and women: el capitán, la capitana.
Wall
muro
wall
A wall or outside barrier.
Explains where the ball goes.
Fountain
fuente
fountain
Here, a water place at school.
Key word for the funny scene.
Soaked
empapados
soaked
Empapados means very wet.
Describes people after water.
La Roja
La Roja
La Roja, the Spanish national team
Spain plays in red, so everyone calls the national side La Roja. Roja is feminine because selección is feminine.
The nickname that comes up in any Spanish football conversation.
El clásico
el clásico
el clásico, Real Madrid against Barcelona
The match between Real Madrid and Fútbol Club Barcelona. In Spain you do not need to name the teams: el clásico is enough.
The one fixture everyone in Spain can name.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
Present action
Carlos corre rápido
Carlos runs fast
Corre is the present tense of correr for él.
Helps you describe simple actions as they happen.
Negation
Eso no es verdad
That is not true
No goes before the verb: no es.
Basic negative pattern.
Question
¿Qué pasa aquí?
What is happening here?
¿Qué...? forms a what question.
Useful for asking about a situation.
Pásala: order plus pronoun
pásala
pass it!
Pasa (pass) plus la (it, meaning the ball) are written as one word: pásala. In a positive command the pronoun is glued to the end of the verb and an accent appears.
You cannot look pásala up in a dictionary until you can split it into pasa + la.
Read a book in Spanish
All A1 books
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