Different goals

I. Vocabulary. Read and learn the following words:

Tribe – племя

Social customs – социальные привычки

To drop from the players’ badges – убирать c бейджиков игроков

Effort – усилие

To strengthen – укрепить

Stock market flotation – акции на бирже

Market value - рыночная оценка

Accountant – бухгалтер

Media coverage – освещение в СМИ

To turn profits – получать прибыль

Bluechip company - фин. " голубая фишка", первоклассная компания (крупная солидная компания, известная своей надежностью, качеством товаров и услуг, стабильной прибылью, а также выплачивающая дивиденды)

To envy – завидовать

Oil well – нефтяная скважина

To stock – хранить на складе

Item – единица товара

Merchandising outlets – торговая точка по продаже товара

To deal – иметь дело, сделку

To net – иметь чистый доход

To struggle to survive – бороться за выживание

To be concerned about – быть обеспокоенным

Recently – недавно

To complain about – жаловаться

Permit – разрешать

Thoroughbred racehorse – чистокровный скакун/рысак

TV commercial – телереклама

To have a point – иметь достаточно серьезные основания, аргументы в разговоре

Headline – заголовок

Outlet – рынок сбыта

II. Reading. Read and translate the following text:

There was a recent news report about an anthropologist who discovered a lost tribe in the Amazon whose way of life had hardly changed since the Stone Age and who had never seen a car or met a foreigner. What shocked her most about the natives, however, was not their strange social customs or mysterious religious rituals, but the fact that several of them were wearing Manchester United football shirts!

Whether or not that report is true, what is certain is that Manchester United stopped being just a famous football team several years ago and became a highly successful multinational corporation. The words “football” and “club” were actually dropped from the players’ badges in 2000 in an effort to strengthen corporate image. With a successful stock market flotation in 1991 and a market value, according to City accountants Deloitte and Touche, of over 110 million pounds, Manchester United is as much a triumph of the media as of great soccer.

Since 1990 the club has won – to date four League titles, a League Cup, three FA Cups, A European Cup Winners Cup and a European Super Cup. But it was the media coverage of the 1990 World Cup and the arrival of Sky TV in 1993 that really transformed the game into the money-making industry it is today. “Top clubs have grown on the back of television contracts”, says Richard Baldwin of Deloitte and Touche. Teams like Bayern Munich, Arsenal, Real Madrid and Galatasaray turn profits many bluechip companies would envy.

“It’s an oil well”, says Manchester United’s former head of merchandising. He should know. The team’s megastore at Old Trafford, which stocks 1, 500 different items, is constantly packed, and merchandising outlets as far away as Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney attract thousands of fans who couldn’t even tell you where Manchester is on the map. ”United look and behave very much like a traditional business from a corporate point of view”, says Nigel Hawkins, a financial analyst at Williams de Broё.

“They have a strong brand and they have worked to maximize it by bringing in good people”. They certainly have. One sponsorship deal alone – with Vodaphone – netted Manchester 30 million pounds.

But not everyone is so enthusiastic about the branding of soccer. Many of the small clubs, for example, whose matches never get air time, struggle to survive. Since that’s where tomorrow’s stars will come from, that could be very bad for the game’s future. And some people are also concerned about the number of foreign players bought by the top clubs to make sure they keep winning trophies. No wonder the England team does so badly, they say, when most of the best players in the English Premier League have foreign passports!

Recently, even some of the stars themselves have complained about contracts that permit them to be traded for millions like thoroughbred racehorses. Imagine, said one player, you worked for IBM and not only did they insist you appear in all their TV commercials, but when you wanted to move to Hewlett-Packard, they demanded ten million dollars from your new employer! He may have a point. But systems analysts don’t make headlines and not even IBM has its logo in the Amazon rainforest.