With the whole of Europe gripped by football mania (?) this looks like a good time to revise some tricky football expressions. First, I would use the word
championships (with -s) to mean a tournament or competition, and championship (without - s) to mean the position or title of champion. Then there's no problem understanding "to win the
championships OR the championship".
"To play" is best used without a preposition (e.g. with, against), but directly, like "Portugal played Greece in the opening match". "To win" is connected with a game
or a match, or a tournament or some championships, to win the cup or to win the title. For the result, say that Greece beat Portugal 2:1 (say "two-one"), or (OK, if you absolutely have to) that
England lost to France by one goal to two. The words are more important than the order of the scores, so there's no mistake in saying that they lost 2:1. The bigger score always comes first - and
say "nil" for a zero score, no goals.
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