Unit1-Part2-Reading

The World Cup.

The World Cup is the biggest football tournament in the world.

The First World Cup was held in 1930 in Uruguay, who won the title that year.

The tournament has been held every four years since then.

However, when World War II broke out in 1935, the 1942 tournament was called off.

The 1946 tournament was also cancelled.

Only 13 teams competed in the First World Cup, but at present, the format of the tournament involves 32 teams, who compete for the Cup for about a month.

This period is called the World Cup finals.

During the three years before this period, teams of about 200 nations try hard to qualify for the finals.

Brazil and Italy have been very successful in the World Cup so far.

In fact, Brazil has competed in every World Cup.

Germany, Argentina, Uruguay, England, France and Spain have also become World Cup champions.

The 19th World Cup was held in 2010 in South Africa.

This was the first time that the tournament was hosted by an African country.

The games were played in different cities of the host country.

The final game, which Spain won with a 1 -0 victory over the Netherlands, was played at the soccer city stadium of Johannesburg.

The 2010 World Cup introduced South Africa's Vuvuzela to the world.

This instrument is a colorful plastic horn that sounds like an elephant.

The horns were blown by African fans throughout all the games.

This caused many complaints as the noise affected players' performance.