Hello everyone, this is Damian from the languagecaster team and as it’s Chinese New Year we thought we’d take a look back at one of our listening posts from 2015 when we reported on football in China. Now obviously some of the data has changed in the past five years but the worksheet, with answers, is a useful resource for learners of English – in fact, we have added more updated information to the report at the end! Oh, and as it is 2020 and five years later do you know what Chinese Year is being celebrated? The answer, along with more information will appear at the end of this report. OK, here’s the 2015 report on football in China. 新年快乐/恭喜發財 Introduction DF: Now, as it is Chinese New Year we are going to be taking a look at football in China through numbers in this week’s main listening report. You can listen to the report by clicking on the link below, while vocabulary support (in bold) appears at the foot of the post, and we also have a worksheet with answers in-China.pdf">here. 82 This is the current FIFA ranking for the Chinese men’s football team – an increase of 15 places since the start of the year thanks to their performances in the recent Asian Cup. Though this is an improvement, it is still a long way from the 1998 high of 37. The Chinese women’s national team is currently in 13th position – up from 18th last year. 1 The Chinese national team has only played on one occasion in the World Cup – in 2002 in Japan/Korea. The team failed to progress from the group stage which included Brazil, Costa Rica and Turkey and did not even register a point or score a goal. They have not really looked like qualifying since then and indeed in the 2014 qualification campaign they did not even manage to make it into the final group stage in the Asian section. 2004 The Chinese Super League first started in 2004 with 12 teams taking part. Shenzhen Jianlibao were the inaugural winners but the most successful club in Super League history is Guangzhou Evergrande who have won the last four titles followed by Shandong Luneng with three wins. There are now 16 teams in the league with the top 3 teams qualifying for the Asian Champions League while the bottom two sides are relegated to the second tier. 112 The most capped player in Chinese history is Li Weifeng with 112 appearances for the national side, while the all-time leading scorer is Hao Haidong with 41 goals in 107 games – not too shabby at all. Contact/Social Media DF: Now, you can find the transcript for that report and a worksheet with answers by coming along to our site here at languagecaster.com. You’ll also be able to find lots of other football-language related resources, for example, we have a huge list of football expressions and vocabulary in our football glossary. And we also have a football-language forum where you can ask us any questions about words or phrases from football. And don’t forget that you can get in contact with us via Twitter or by Facebook.