聽力原文:
1 CHINESE demand for the world’s commodities may be sputtering, but not for the most vital ingredient of football: its players. In recent weeks, the country’s football clubs have been on their biggest ever spending spree, signing up foreign talent for sums which, by Asian standards, have been jaw-dropping. One local newspaper in China said anyone who paid attention to Chinese football would conclude that the clubs had “gone mad”.
重點詞匯：
sputter VERB (過程、行動或事態)緩慢不穩地進行，慢慢結束
vital 必要的;至關重要的;必不可少的
ingredient 要素;因素
spree 毫無節制;縱情
sum 款項;金額
聽力原文:
2 Jiangsu Suning, a club owned by an eponymous retail chain, broke a record on January 27th when it paid ￡25m ($35m) for Ramires, a Brazilian midfielder (known only by his forename) who had been playing for Chelsea, an English team. That was the most an Asian club had spent on a footballer. Seven days later Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao took Jackson Martínez from Atlético Madrid, a big Spanish team, for $45m. Within a couple of days Jiangsu had smashed the record again, paying a Ukrainian team, Shakhtar Donetsk, $53m for Alex Teixeira, another Brazilian midfielder.
重點詞匯：
eponymous 同名的
Evergrande 恒大
聽力原文:
3 By the time China’s two-month-long winter transfer-period ends on February 26th, its top-division clubs will have spent a net amount of around $300m (the amount spent on buying players minus the amount received for selling them). That is more than the combined net outlay of all the clubs in Europe’s top five leagues during the winter period. The net spending of clubs in the English Premier League was the second highest ($220m); those in China’s second division ranked third, at $55m.
4 President Xi Jinping may be less inclined to call this mad. Oddly for someone with so much else to worry about, from reviving a slowing economy to fighting corruption, he has set much store by football. A year ago a committee charged with overseeing wide-ranging economic and social reforms turned its attention to an area of great concern in the football-loving nation: its dismal performance in the game. The committee, headed by Mr Xi, endorsed the Communist Party’s first ever plan for “football reforms” (with “Chinese characteristics”, naturally). These, it said, were aimed at ending the “backward” state of football in China and helping the country realise its “dream of sporting great-powerdom”. The plan says the number of football academies should increase tenfold to 50,000 by 2025. It decrees that football be made compulsory at school.
重點詞匯：
incline (使)傾向;(使)趨向,
Oddly 奇怪的是；說來也怪
set much store 重視
dismal 憂郁的;凄涼的;令人沮喪的
decree 決定;規定;命令;頒布
compulsory 必須做的，強制的，強迫的
聽力原文:
5 Football is particularly important for Mr. Xi. He has been a fan since childhood. For a while after he took over as China’s leader his office, or at least the room said to be such in official photographs, featured the above picture of him as vice-president kicking a ball in Ireland. Mr. Xi’s reform plan says football can help boost patriotism and a “collective spirit”—attributes Mr. Xi is keen to inculcate in a society fractured by rapid economic change.
重點詞匯：
Featured verb 出演重頭戲;擔任主演;(在展覽、雜志中)為重點推出的部分
patriotism 愛國主義 愛國心
collective 集體的；共有的；共同的
attribute 把…歸因于；認為…是由于
inculcate 反復灌輸；諄諄教誨
fracture (使)分裂;(使)解散
聽力原文:
6 Chinese businesses are keen to play along. Four companies have taken over a first-division Chinese football club in the past two years. In October China Media Capital (CMC), a venture-capital firm, agreed to pay $1.3 billion for five years of television rights to the Chinese Super League (CSL), more than 25 times the amount paid by state television for the football season in 2015. (On February 23rd, the firm resold the first two years of rights at a 35% profit.) In December CMC bought a 13% stake in Manchester City, an English club, weeks after CMC’s chairman accompanied Mr Xi on a tour of the club’s facilities. Wang Jianlin, China’s richest man, recently snapped up a 20% stake in Atlético Madrid. Dalian Wanda, a firm owned by Mr Wang, is spending millions of dollars on the coaching of 180 Chinese players at world-class facilities in Spain.
重點詞匯：

play along PHRASAL VERB （暫且對…）附和；（暫時與…）合作
If you play along with a person, with what they say, or with their plans, you appear to agree with them and do what they want, even though you are not sure whether they are right.
venture-capital 風險資本
snap up 搶購；搶先弄到手
聽力原文:

Money talks
7 As well as signing up expensive foreign players, CSL clubs have been recruiting former managers of the English and Brazilian national teams. Guangzhou Evergrande Taobao employs dozens of coaches from Real Madrid to train the 3,000-odd youngsters enrolled at its academy. The drawback of working for a little-known team can be offset by a big pay-packet (Ezequiel Lavezzi, an Argentine forward from Paris St-Germain, a French team, recently joined a provincial squad in China for a reported salary of more than $300,000 a week). The CSL appears likely soon to eclipse Major League Soccer in America as a destination of choice for footballers who are more after money than prestige.
重點詞匯：

odd 奇形怪狀的；各種各樣的
eclipse 使黯然失色;使相形見絀;蓋過

聽力原文:
8 Mr. Xi sees the game as a useful tool of diplomacy (his overseas visits often involve football-related events). But China’s league is still a long way from exerting the kind of soft power that the English Premier League bestows upon Britain (ask any taxi driver in China). Mr. Xi has said he dreams of China winning the World Cup. England itself has no blueprint for that.
重點詞匯：
exerting 施加（影響、壓力等）行使，運用（權威等）
bestow （將…）給予，授予，獻給

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