(1) Maybe the English are not world champions any more but they invented some of the world’s most popular sports. The modern games of football, tennis and rugby all started in England. Then others learned to play – and beat the English at their own game… (2)A form of football was played in China more than 2,500 years ago; the people in Florence have played a variation of football known as calciostorico since the sixteenth century. Three hundred years later, in 1848, two football players from Cambridge University first wrote down the rules of football. The first organized football club was Sheffield F.C. – it started in 1857 and is still in action today.
(3)British sailors took football with them to the ports of Italy, Brazil and Argentina where the game quickly found new fans. A number of famous clubs in Spain, Italy and Argentina were founded by Englishmen. But while the rest of the world developed its football skills, England didn’t even play in the first three World Cups. When they finally entered for the first time in 1950, they lost their most important match – to the United States!
(4)Like football, the game of rugby developed in England. According to legend, the game started when William Webb Ellis, a schoolboy at Rugby school, picked the ball up and ran with it. Again, it wasn’t long before the game spread abroad… and again, England started losing. New Zealand, South Africa and Australia have won the Rugby World Cup five times between them… England has won it just once!
(5)A game called jeu de paume was played in France nearly 800 years ago. It was similar to tennis but players used their hands instead of a tennis racquet and the ball was made of leather. It was so hard that it could cause injury, or even death! Then in the 1870s, an English army officer developed the rules of modern lawn tennis. The game was played with racquets, and a lighter ball, made of rubber. Wimbledon Tennis Club held the first lawn tennis championship in 1877, and first seven champions were all English. Then the good news ended for English tennis. The last English tennis player to win Wimbledon was Virginia Wade in… 1977!
(6) But perhaps things are changing. In 2013 and 2016 Andy Murrey, the famous tennis player, won Wimbledon, although he always points out that he is Scottish, not English. The 2012 Olympics took place in London. The British team won 65 medals. It was a record for the Great Britain and Northern Ireland team to win 67 medals at the Brazil Olympics in 2016. So hopes for the future Olympic Games in Japan are high!

Task 1. Read the text. Match the headings (A–G) to the paragraphs (1-6). There is one heading you DO NOT NEED to use.

A How football went around the world
B A brighter future for British sport?
C Britain: the home of sport?
D How a schoolboy changed the game of football
E The origins of modern football
F How tennis developed
G The authors of football rules

MI743    2   04.11.2020 06:52    69