BEST IELTS General Reading Test 508

BEST IELTS General Reading Test 508

IELTS GENERAL READING TEST 508 – PASSAGE – 3

IELTS GENERAL READING TEST – 508

READING PASSAGE – 3

THE HISTORY OF FOOTBALL

A. The first known examples of a team game involving a ball, which was made out of a rock, occurred in old Mesoamerican cultures for over 3,000 years ago. According to the sources, the ball would symbolize the sun and the captain of the losing team would be sacrificed to the gods. Other earlier variety of ball games had been known from Ancient Greece.

The ball was made by shreds of leather filled with hair. The first documents of balls filled with air are from the 7th century. In the Ancient Rome, games with balls were not included in the entertainment on the big arenas, but could occur in exercises in the military. It was the Roman culture that would bring football to the British island (Britannica).

B. The most admitted story tells that the game was developed in England in the 12th century. Besides kicks, the game also involved punches of the ball with the fist. This early form of football was also much rougher and more violent than the modern way of playing. At times forbidden for its violent nature, football-like games would appear again in the streets of London in the 17th century. It would be forbidden again in 1835, but at this stage the game had been established in the public schools.

IELTS General Reading Test

The game was often played in schools and two of the predominant schools were Rugby and Eton. At Rugby the rules included the possibility to take up the ball with the hands; at Eton on the other hand the ball was played exclusively with the feet and this game can be seen as a close predecessor to the modern football. The game in Rugby was called “the running game” while the game in Eton was called “the dribbling game”.

An attempt to create proper rules for the game was done at a meeting in Cambridge in 1848, but a final solution to some questions of rules was not achieved. It was decided that carrying the ball with the hands wasn’t allowed. The meeting also resulted in a standardization of the size and weight of the ball.

IELTS General Reading Test

C. Football clubs have existed since the 15th century, but unorganized and without official status. It is therefore hard to decide which the first football club was. Some historians suggest that it was the Foot-Ball Club formed 1824 in Edinburgh. Earlier clubs were often formed by former school students and the first of this kind was formed in Sheffield in 1855. The oldest among professional football clubs is the English club Notts County, formed in 1862 and still exists today. Initially, football was dominated by public school teams, but later, teams consisting of workers would be the majority.

Another change was when some clubs became willing to pay the best players to join their team. This would be the start of a long period of transition, not without friction, in which the game would develop to a professional level. The motivation behind paying players was not only to win more matches, but in the 1880s the interest in the game had moved ahead to a level that tickets were sold for the matches. And finally, in 1885 professional football was legalized and three years later the Football League was established. During the first season, 12 clubs joined the league, but soon more clubs became interested and the competition would consequently expand into more divisions.

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D. Other milestones were now to follow. Football Association Challenge Cup (FA Cup) became the first important competition when it was run in 1871. The following year a match between two national teams was played for the first time. The match that involved England and Scotland ended 0-0 and was followed by 4,000 people. Twelve years later, in 1883, the first international tournament took place and included four national teams: England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

Football was for a long time a British phenomenon, but gradually spread to other European countries. The first game that took place outside Europe occurred in Argentina in 1867, but it was foreign British workers who were involved and not Argentinean citizens. Domestic leagues occurred in many countries, the first was the English Football League which was established in 1888. In 1908 football would be, for the first time, included as an official sport in the Olympic Games. Until the first FIFA World Cup was played in 1930, the Olympic Games football tournament would rank as the most prestigious. Women’s football was not added until 1996.

IELTS General Reading Test

E. Few other sports show examples of zeal and intensity to the extent as in football. In 1894, the FA Cup final between Notts County and Bolton Wanderers was attended by 37,000 people. A milestone in football stadiums is the construction of Maracana Stadium. In 1950 the imposing stadium in Rio de Janeiro was ready for almost 200,000 people. No other sport has seen stadiums of that capacity built to host its games.

There have been two different traditions of fan culture on the arenas: the British and the South American. The British fans adopted the tradition of singing, the repertoire were inspired from pub and working songs among other areas. The South Americans on the other hand would adopt the carnival style which includes firecrackers and fireworks.

IELTS General Reading Test

F. No other sport event besides the Olympic Games can today measure itself with the FIFA World Cup. The first edition of the FIFA World Cup was played in 1930 in Uruguay and has since then returned every fourth year (with two exceptions due to the Second World War). In 1991 the first World Cup for women was held in China and has since then also returned every fourth year. Today the biggest global tournament for clubs is the Champions League, played since 1992.

G. In the late 19th century, only a few national football teams existed; England and Scotland had the first active teams that played games against each other in the 1870s. Today there are 211 national associations included in the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the world governing body of the sport. Another proof of the globalization could be seen in the increase of nations participating in World Cup qualifiers: from 32 in 1934 to over 200 in 2014.

IELTS General Reading Test

H. In most parts of the world, football is used as the name for the “chess of the green pitch”, the biggest sport in the world. In the United States and Canada, however, soccer is used instead as a distinction from American football. A more formal name sometimes used is association football, but in popular speech, it is either football or soccer.

Questions 28 -35

The text has 8 SECTIONS, marked A to H. Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.

i. The game starts to get organized

ii. A game of passion

ii. The genesis of the game

iv. The game takes its form

v. The first competitions

vi. What is in a name?

vii. Globalization of the game

vii. The great modern competitions

ix. Rugby and football differentiated

x. The game goes professional

IELTS General Reading Test

28. Paragraph A

29. Paragraph B

30. Paragraph C

31. Paragraph D

32. Paragraph E

33. Paragraph F

34. Paragraph G

35. Paragraph H

IELTS General Reading Test

Questions 36 – 40

Write a WORD OR a NUMBER taken from the box below.

36. The ………………. that most people agree with is that the game was developed in England.

37. There have been clubs playing football since the 1400s, and it is ………………. to identify the first one.

38. The first football match between two national teams was played in ……………….

39. Citizens of the ………………. country were not involved in the first game of football played outside Europe.

40. European and South American spectators of the sport can be ………………. from the manner in which they cheer their team.

IELTS General Reading Test

IELTS General Reading Test

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IELTS General Reading Test

ANSWERS

28. III

29. IV

30. I

31. V

32. II

33. VIII

34. VII

35. VI

36. NARRATIVE

37. TOUGH

38. 1872

39. HOST

40. DISTINGUISHED

IELTS General Reading Test