跟读练习: How Leicester City Collapsed - 通过视频学习英语口语
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In May 2016, Leicester City completed arguably the biggest shock in football history by winning the Premier League.
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But just ten years later, they've been relegated to English football's third tier for only the second time in their history.
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The dream has turned into a nightmare.
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So what's gone wrong at Leicester City?
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Welcome to Tifo Football by The Athletic.
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Leicester's incredible journey had actually started six years before their league title, when they were taken over by Thai businessman Vishay Srivathana Prabha, known as Khun Vishay.
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Under his ownership, they experienced the high of promotion to the Premier League in 2014,
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a miraculous relegation escape in 2015 and of course the world famous fairytale title in 2016.
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The Champions League quarter-final followed in 2017,
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but in 2018, Kun Vishay tragically died in a helicopter crash outside Leicester's King Power Stadium that also killed four other people.
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His role as Leicester owner and chairman was taken over by his son Kun Top,
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who pledged to realise his father's vision for a club that could consistently challenge for Champions League football.
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He pressed ahead with his plans to build a state-of-the-art £100m training ground
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and an expansion of King Power Stadium to increase capacity to 40,000, and to build revenue-generating infrastructure outside the ground, including retail outlets, a hotel,
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restaurants, offices and an indoor arena.
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For a while, Leicester's success continued.
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Under manager Brendan Rodgers, they won a first-ever FA Cup in 2021
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and secured three consecutive top eight finishes in the Premier League.
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But in the background, key mistakes were being made.
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After their title success, Leicester Twitter had avoided profit and sustainability breaches by selling one key player each summer.
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But in the summer of 2021, they abandoned that model.
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With Rodgers' chosen head of recruitment, Lee Congleton, in charge, they signed Patson Dacca, Yannick Vestergaard and Boubacare Samare for big money without selling an asset.
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And Rodgers himself was earning £8 million per year, making him the highest paid manager in the club's history.
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All of this happened just as the club's revenue was starting to be hit by external factors.
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They had already committed to the training ground move when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and dramatically increased the cost of materials, though the stadium development was shelved.
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The pandemic also negatively impacted King Power, the tourism company that Kunvischai had founded and that Kun Top had taken over.
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was particularly badly affected, given that it's rooted in duty-free tourism retail.
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In the 2020-21 season, Leicester missed out on Champions League qualification on the final day of the season, and this proved to be a sliding doors moment.
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Had they qualified, the revenue could have justified their ambitious, risky approach.
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Not qualifying put a club that was perhaps uniquely vulnerable to the global economic circumstances of the time under even more strain.
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In 2022 they posted a loss of £92.5 million.
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Spending had spiralled out of control and by the 22-23 season Leicester's wages to revenue ratio had ballooned to a staggering 116%.
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That season the club sleepwalked towards relegation.
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Rodgers was not sacked until April, despite just seven wins in 29 matches with the seventh highest budget in the league.
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In the summer that followed relegation, seven senior players, who'd been recruited for a total investment of £107m, were allowed to run down their contracts and leave on free transfers.
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The financial impact of the relegation was disastrous.
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Leicester did gain promotion straight back to the Premier League the following year, but did so with the largest budget in Championship history
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and more significant losses that put them in breach of profit and sustainability regulations.
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Under the PSR, Premier League clubs are allowed to lose a maximum of £105m over three seasons or £35m a season.
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Championship clubs, meanwhile, follow similar rules and are permitted to lose up to £39m over a three-season period, or £13m per season.
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Across this three-year accounting period, Leicester spent two seasons in the Premier League and one in the Championship, meaning that they were permitted to lose a maximum of £83m.
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A Premier League statement claimed, however, that they'd breached the PSR threshold by £20.8m.
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Leicester argue that their threshold should have been the £105m given to teams who spent all three years in the Premier League,
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but this was dismissed by an independent commission who handed them a six-point deduction in February 2026.
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By this point, Leicester were already back in the Championship, looking for a sixth new manager in four years.
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They were looking because they'd just sacked Marti Sifuentes, who himself was not appointed until the eve of the first day of pre-season, so that the cost of sacking his predecessor,
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Ruud van Nisselrooy could be deferred to the following year's accounts for financial purposes.
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So with the season already going badly, Leicester were now facing a relegation battle but in the Championship this time, and decision makers were once again slow to act.
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It was as if no lessons had been learned from the 2022-23 Premier League season when the club sleepwalked into relegation.
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When the January transfer window opened, instead of adding players with experience of such a battle to help the cause,
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they brought in youngsters like Devine Mukasa from Manchester City and Dijuan Richards from Chelsea.
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Two talented players, but players without experience, especially of a relegation battle.
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They were thrust into a squad where some of their teammates had wanted to leave but couldn't, and others who knew they were leaving in the summer anyway.
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It's a dysfunctional dressing room, lacking in true leadership, and the supporters will not lament the loss of many of the departed.
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Inevitably, following relegation and a huge drop in revenue, the squad will have to be completely dismantled and rebuilt this summer,
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amidst huge financial cuts across every department of the club.
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The squad costs to revenue ratio has been reduced to 81% from the staggering 116 a few years earlier,
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but it will have to come down by another 20% at least in League One, meaning that young assets like Ben Nelson,
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Abdel Fattou and possibly Jeremy Monger will have to be sold.
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And whoever remains will see another relegation clause activated to cut their wages further.
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With the financial hit of relegation, the complete overhaul of the playing squad and lingering discontent around the club,
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it will take a herculean effort to win back the hearts and minds of a large section of the supporters.
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Amidst the anger, resentment and indignation at Leicester's fall from the pinnacle of English football, the overriding sentiment is that of sadness.
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The greatest fairy tale in English football history has now turned into such a tragedy.
为何这个视频是练习口语的好材料？
这个讲述莱斯特城兴衰的视频，语速适中且用词贴近日常，非常适合用来提高英语发音和练习口语流畅度。视频中既有叙事性的长句，也有简洁的评论，涵盖了体育、商业、社会事件等多元话题，能帮助学习者熟悉不同场景下的表达逻辑。此外，主持人的发音清晰，语调起伏自然，是看视频学英语的优质素材。
拆解地道表达，学习自然口语
我们来看看视频里的几个句子，分析它们为何听起来自然：
- “The dream has turned into a nightmare.” 这里用“turn into”形象地描述了从梦想变为噩梦的过程，简单却生动，比生硬的“become”更有画面感。
- “Leicester's incredible journey had actually started six years before their league title.” 句中的“actually”弱化了语气，让表达更口语化，避免显得过于正式。
- “Spending had spiralled out of control.” “spiral out of control”是地道短语，用来形容开支“急剧失控”，比“increase quickly”更精准且符合英语使用者的表达习惯。
影子跟读练习法，轻松提升口语
利用这个视频练习英语影子跟读（shadow speak），可以试试这样的步骤：首先完整观看一遍视频，熟悉内容和语调；然后逐句播放，每句暂停后立刻跟读，模仿主持人的发音、语调和节奏，这就是shadowspeaks的核心技巧；最后用录音设备记录自己的跟读，对比原视频，找出发音和流畅度的差距。建议每天练习10-15分钟，坚持一周就能明显感受到口语的进步。这种方法不仅能锻炼听力，还能让你的口语更接近 native speaker 的水平。
什么是跟读法？
跟读法 (Shadowing) 是一种有科学依据的语言学习技巧，最初开发用于专业口译员的培训，并由多语言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。这个方法简单而强大：您在听英语母语原声的同时立即大声重复——就像是一个延迟1-2秒紧跟说话者的影子。与被动听力或语法练习不同，跟读法强迫您的大脑和口腔肌肉同时处理并模仿真实的讲话模式。研究表明它能显着提高发音准确性，语调，节奏，连读，听力理解和口语流利度——使其成为雅思口语备考和真实英语交流最有效的方法之一。