Look out for several uses of passive grammar in bold throughout the article
Rooney has been banned for 3 games for next year’s European Championship. England qualified for the tournament last week by drawing with Montenegro but unfortunately England’s best player was given an immediate red card for kicking an opponent. As a result, he will miss the group stages of the tournament and will therefore only be available if England reach the quarter-finals.
He has always had a short-temper but it had been thought that he was now able to control that aggression. It was strange because during that game, it was not like the other player did anything unusual to provoke him – he was being blocked from getting the ball and then kicked him out of frustration. It was a stupid thing to do, but to be fair, he did not complain or argue about the decision, like he is usually known to do. UEFA, the European football governing body, described the incident as an ‘assault’ – which you could hardly call that incident.
Personally, it is unbelievable that he has to be forced to miss these amounts of games. Of course, for the other teams that will be in England’s group, its good news. They will definitely benefit and we will definitely struggle without him. What is even more frustrating though is that if a Spanish, Italian or French player did the same thing, I truly believe that they would have been given a less serious punishment. For me, even though Rooney is definitely not a passive person, he is being made an example of by UEFA.
He will certainly be missed during the opening games but I’m confident we have enough talent in the team to make it to the next stage. However, I’m not sure it will make any difference though because it is clear that the European cup is going to be won by Spain!
Passive: We use the passive when it’s not important or clear who does an action. If you want to say who did the action, use by.
- Present Simple: is/are/am + past participle
- He is usually known
- Past Simple: was/were + past participle
- England’s best player was given
- Present Perfect: have/has + been + past participle
- Rooney has been banned
- Past Perfect: had +been + past participle
- It had been thought
- Present Continuous: is/are/am +being + past participle
- He is being made
- Past Continuous: was/were + being + past participle
- He was being blocked
- Future: will + be + past participle, is/are/am + going to + be + past participle
- He will certainly be missed, The European cup is going to be won
- Modal verbs: modal verb + be + past participle
- He has to be forced
- Past modals: should/would/could + have + been + past participle
- They would have been given
