Tuesday 18 December 2012

People & Sport: The Respected Cristiano Ronaldo


Image from visual.ly

It seems like all of a sudden, my students start asking me how to train accent, what to watch to learn good accent, so as usual, I recommend them to all the TV shows I love.

Then came a documentary I immediately fell in love with. The British program talks about Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo, one of the best players in the world, undergoing a series of tests in order to discover how he becomes such a tremendously exceptional football player.

Honestly speaking, I have always liked Lionel Messi more than Ronaldo, because Messi plays simple yet practical football without the fancy moves of Cristiano Ronaldo, but the following video completely changed my stubborn mind.



Ronaldo is the a well-deserved worldclass player, I have a lot of respect for him. It doesn't matter so much whether Messi scores more than Ronaldo, because football is a team game, given different team mates, their performance will be different. What matters is that they are both footballers from other planets and we are all lucky enough to witness such amazing skills by the players.
Description of Knuckleball in Baseball
Image from washingtonpost

After watching the above video, I immediately want to start practising! I'll start with the video below, being able to kick the Ronaldo's knuckleball will be an excellent Christmas present for myself!



Vocabulary:

knuckleball -- (n)[C] or knuckler is a baseball pitch thrown so as to minimize the spin of the ball in flight, causing an erratic, unpredictable motion. The lack of spin causes vortices over the stitched seams of the baseball during its trajectory, which in turn can cause the pitch to change direction – and even corkscrew – in mid-flight.
seam -- (n)[C] a line where two things join, especially a line of sewing joining two pieces of cloth or leather
trajectory -- (n)[U]specialized the curved path that an object follows after it has been thrown or shot into the air


Resources:

Cristiano Ronaldo tested to the limit HD 720p (Full preview) @ YouTube