Practice your consecutive and/or simultaneous interpreting skills with this speech exercise. The FIFA Football World Cup is arguably the greatest international sports event in the World: this speech covers some interesting facts and figures. Note: The Speech starts STRAIGHT AWAY!
Topic(s): Sports
Terms: TERMS: FIFA, World Cup, national team, Oceanian, youth tournaments, under 20s, under 17s
Sources:
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Good For Practicing:
- Interpreting note-taking
- Simultaneous Interpreting
- Conference Interpreting
- Australian accent
Also available on Speechpool.
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Script*:
*Please check the script only after you’ve done the note-taking exercise, otherwise that’s cheating! 🙂
‘The FIFA World Cup is the most prestigious international football competition in the world. It that takes place every 4 years, and since 1930 (when the inaugural tournament took place) it has had more than 20 editions.
It’s the most widely viewed sporting event. National teams from all around the world compete with each other to qualify for the competition; in the end, only 32 teams are allowed in.
The most successful nation in terms of World Cup victories is Brazil – perhaps unsurprisingly. At the time of recording, they became world champions a total of 5 times. Germany and Italy have won it 4 times each; Argentina, France and Uruguay have 2 titles each; and England and Spain both have won it on one occasion.
As you can see, so far only teams from Europe and South America have won the tournament. The best result ever achieved by a national team outside these 2 confederations took place in 1930, when the USA ended up in 3rd place.
South Korea finished 4th in 2002: that’s the best performance ever achieved by an Asian nation.
When it comes to the African Confederation, 3 teams have reached the quarterfinals to date: Cameroon, Ghana and Senegal.
And the best performance ever by an Oceanian nation was achieved by Australia in 2006: they managed to qualify to the round of 16.
To give you an idea of how popular the competition is, in 2018 a record audience of more than 3.5 billion people watched the World Cup. That roughly equated to half of the world population at the time.
Now, despite the immense popularity of the Men’s World Cup, let’s not forget it’s not the only large football tournament organised by FIFA.
The Women’s World Cup had its first edition in 1991 and follows the same format as the Men’s tournament. The US are the most successful nation, having won 4 editions, followed by Germany with 2 titles. Japan and Norway have won 1 Women’s world cup each.
In addition, there are also several youth tournaments. The FIFA under 20s world cup is held every 2 years, just like the under 17s world cup. They allow the best youngster players and national teams to compete against each other by age group. There are separate youth tournaments for Men and Women as well.
Overall, it’s hard to overstate the excitement that a major competition like this generates all around the world. Even when certain world cup editions turn out to be riddled with controversies and scandals (I think you know what I mean…), the average football fan still looks forward to watching their favourites players compete in the greatest stage of all.’
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