英音听力材料 2016-06-06

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BBC Radio 4 2016-06-06

Good morning. Twenty years ago football came home in Euro 96, and in the coming weeks, even fifty years of hurt will not stop me dreaming that Wayne Rooney lifts the Henri Delaunay Cup in winning the European Championship. But behind what has become a media and financial juggernaut, is a story of faith and hope.

While England may claim to the home of football, European and world championships have their origin in France - through Henri Delaunay and his predecessor as President of the French Football Federation, Jules Rimet . They were the architects of both the World Cup and the European Football Championship and represented a morality very different to recent reports of FIFA secret bonuses.

For Rimet in particular, football was an outworking of his faith. Inspired by catholic social teaching he took the view that sport was important to God and to the future shaping of society. In his twenties, he founded a