TEXT 6. MANCHESTER UNITED

 

Many English football teams have the word United in their name, but by far the most famous is from the northern city of Manchester and plays in red shirts and white shorts. When football fans refer to Manchester United just as ‘United’, as they often do, other fans always know who they mean.

It’s possible that United have more fans than any other football team in the world. Their stadium, Old Trafford, holds around 75,000 people and is full for almost every match. It’s also true that tens of millions of people around the world watch their matches on TV, and that when they play friendlies thousands of miles away in Asia or Africa (as they have done in recent years in July or August, before the English football season starts) the crowds are always very big.

The club was founded back in 1878 and has had a successful history. It has won the English championship eighteen times (the same number as Liverpool, their biggest rivals) and the European Champions’ League (previously the European Cup) three times.

A well-known tragedy in United’s history was when many of their best players died in a plane crash in Munich, Germany, in 1958. It seemed the club might not recover, but ten years later, in 1968, they became the first English team to win the European Cup.

United’s best players in their great team of the late 1960s included Bobby Charlton (probably the most famous English footballer of the 1960s) and George Best (who some say was the best player who never played in a World Cup – the reason was that he was from Northern Ireland, a country that never qualified for the World Cup during his career).

United were not so good in the 1970s and 80s but have been very successful again since the 1990s under their Scottish manager Alex Ferguson. In the 1990s the best players included Eric Cantona, a Frenchman who was very popular with the fans, and David Beckham, who even people who hate football have heard of.

United’s best player at the moment is perhaps the 24-year-old English forward Wayne Rooney. He is so good that some fans think England have a chance of winning the 2010 World Cup if he plays, but no chance if he gets injured.

RONALDINHO

 

You’ve probably never heard of Ronaldo de Assis Moreira, even though he is one of the most famous sportsmen in the world. That’s because almost everyone knows him by his nickname, which means ‘little Ronald’ in his native Portuguese.

His face is familiar to billions of people because of his achievements on the pitch, his big front teeth and almost permanent grin, and also the large number of TV adverts he has appeared in. It’s also difficult to find a football-related computer game that doesn’t have his picture somewhere on the packaging. The sportsman we are talking about is, of course, the 26-year-old Brazilian footballer Ronaldinho.

Everyone who enjoys football would agree that he is one of the most entertaining players in the world, often showing skills that even opposition fans applaud. He has been playing for Barcelona since 2003 and for Brazil since 1999, and has scored many memorable and important goals for both teams.

Born in the city of Porto Alegre in the south of Brazil, his football skills were obvious from a young age. When he was eight he started playing at junior level for Gremio, a club in Porto Alegre, and at thirteen he scored 23 goals in one match! The media began to realize how special he was when he reached the Gremio senior team, and by 2001, when he moved to France to play for Paris St Germain, he was already one of the most well-known young footballers in the world. Though he played very well for Brazil in the 2002 World Cup, he was not so successful in Paris – his manager said he was more interested in nightlife than in matches. After he moved to Barcelona, however, his performances were so good that no one worried about his continued enjoyment of nightclubs.

Ronaldinho’s goals were one of the main reasons why Barcelona won the Champions’ League, the most prestigious football competition in the world, in 2006. As he himself says, ‘God gives gifts to everyone ... Some can write, some can dance. He gave me the skill to play football and I am making the most of it.”

( Source : Стройков, С.А. Broaden Your Horizons /Учебное пособие по переводу общественно-публицистических текстов с английского языка на русский – Самара: Издательство «Офорт», 2011. – 192 с.)

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