Determining Asia’s Best

亞洲杯爭奪戰 Asia’s biggest soccer tournament starts today 亞洲規模最大的足球賽事今日展開by Chip Ewald

Today, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) begins one of the world's foremost soccer tournaments. In the AFC Asian Cup, Asia's top 16 national teams will contend to be the region's best.

How it all got started
The AFC organizes the Asian Cup every four years.
Stretching from Australia to Lebanon, this confederation is the most wide-reaching of FIFA's six confederations.
The AFC began in 1954 with 12 participating nations. As soccer, called football in most countries, grew in popularity throughout Asia, so did the Confederation. Today, the AFC claims 46 member nations-representing over half the world's population! There only 16 out of them are able to play the tournament.

How it all works
In the first round, each of the 16 teams will compete in three matches. Then the eight most successful teams will progress to the next round. The teams that lose in the four matches of that round are knocked out of the tournament. The teams that survive then compete in four final matches that determine the winner.
This winning team claims the Asian title for four years. In addition, it automatically qualifies for another tournament - the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup in Brazil.

Where it all happens
This year's Asian Cup will take place in the Middle Eastern country of Qatar. Though it's one of the world's smallest countries, Qatar isn't worried about handling the crowd. It successfully hosted the AFC Asian Cup in 1988, using only two stadiums. This time, however, the oil-rich country will use five. Qatar certainly won't be the only country putting its best foot forward at the tournament. Asia's finest will be doing the same as the Asian Cup determines its champion.

Vocabulary Tips
knock out somebody-把某人擊倒。也指“淘汰”
*Our opponents were knocked out easily by us.
*This strong team was surprisingly knocked out in the first round of the tournament.
automatically- "auto"-有“自己”之意， automatically-自動自發地，不自覺地。
*The computer software automatically sorts the names alphabetically.
*The fee will be automatically deducted from your account every month.
put one's best foot forward-把某人最好的腳往前伸。即“全力以赴”，竭盡所能的。
*If you want to get the job, you'd better put your best foot forward at your interview.
*Because the football captain always puts his best foot forward during practice, the whole team respects him.

Chat Room
score-得分
touchdown-a score in American football (because knee down so we said touchdown)
basket-a score in basketball投籃得分
try-橄欖球得分
run-baseball 棒球用跑的得分，所以叫 "run"
goal-a score for soccer， 足球得分