The article describes the experience of designing an introductory course in English vocabulary for football accompanied by an English-Russian glossary of football terms. Described are the course objectives, stages of course design, selection principles, course structure and the results of its pilot testing. Although originally designed as an online fast track preparation course for student consecutive interpreting competitions on football related topics, it can also be taught as an ESL course or as part of translator and interpreter training programmes. Plans are to offer it on an open educational resources platform. The course includes 235 terms divided into 11 topics such as players and other people who are included in football sphere, football organizations, football pitch, positions of the goal, match stages and results, football equipment, training process, activities with a ball, gameplay, fouls, different types of football competitions, the stadium and its main zones. Each unit offers texts followed by football terminology activities and translation assignments as well as multimedia applications. The effectiveness of this course has been demonstrated by its pilot testing with a group of students preparing for a consecutive interpreting competition. Introductory terminology courses on topics of student interpreting competitions may become an important element of syllabus preparing budding interpreters for real-life situations and participation in competitions.