The universal language. Thatâs how football is pitched by anyone in a poetic mood. Not to say that itâs fanciful â it is, after all, a game that can be played by pretty much anyone, pretty much anywhere, by people who have never previously met and have no chance of understanding the sounds coming out of each otherâs mouths. Let the football do the talking.
And thatâs all well and good for a kickabout on holiday; you neither need nor necessarily want to know what that tanned Italian lad is saying as he nutmegs you for the seventh time. It becomes more of an issue when youâre a professional footballer who has made a move abroad. How else are you going to settle in at your new club, feel at home in a foreign land and subsequently, so the logic goes, play your best football?
âItâs absolutely crucial for integration with the team and society as a whole,â says Peter Clark, owner and director of Clark Football Languages, which provides lessons for players and managers at some of the top teams in Europe. With former pupils including Fabio Capello and Carlo Ancelotti, he goes by a tried-and-trusted method when heâs teaching English. âYou get your really basic vocabulary that you need for everyday life, then I have Peterâs Football Vocabulary List. Simple things like âgo on the overlapâ and âlead the lineâ are new expressions, then youâve got phrases like âhandbagsâ, âgafferâ and âhairdryer treatmentâ that just do not make sense to a foreign player. But they love that stuff: they find it funny and they canât wait to use it at training.â
Of course, not all players feel the need to speak like a native: Sergio AgĂŒeroâs English skills havenât progressed significantly over the course of ten years at Manchester City, for example, while Gareth Bale has rarely been heard speaking Spanish in public during his time at Real Madrid. And Miroslav Klose â assistant manager at Bayern MĂŒnchen, previously a prolific striker and still Germanyâs all-time top scorer â thinks itâs possible for team-mates to have an understanding on the pitch even if they canât fathom each other off it. He cites his time as a player at Bayern, when he arrived in the same 2007 summer as Italian forward Luca Toni and French winger Franck RibĂ©ry. Toni scored ten goals in the first ten games; Klose seven in the first nine.
âIt was great,â says Klose. âThe three of us arrived together and spent the first three months at the hotel, because none of us had found a house. It was a very special time off the pitch but also on it, even though we didnât speak the same language. Thatâs proof enough to show how much is possible in football without being able to communicate. If weâre aware of the right runs on the pitch and everyone looks out for each other, a lot is possible.â
Chelseaâs Brazilian defender Thiago Silva also thinks itâs feasible to make strides on the pitch despite dialogue deficiencies. Heâs not advocating a head-in-the-sand approach to language- learning (he learnt the lingo when he was in Milan and Paris), but does think a football lingua franca is possible while everyone gets up to speed. âIn football we understand a bit of the words about the game,â he says. âSo we speak some English, some French, Italian, Spanish â even Portuguese â in one sentence. We make ourselves understood. The words come out and later I think, âHow was I able to say this or that?â But thatâs my next goal, of course: mastering English like I was able to master Italian and French.â
Alas, thereâs no fast track to fluency. âIt depends on their application, their dedication to learning,â says Clark. He also points to a geographical trend. âIf you look at a Brazilian, Argentinean or Colombian player and then a French or Italian player, the levels of education they will have had is incomparable. For northern Europeans â German, Dutch, Scandinavian players â English is so embedded in their society that often they donât even need lessons.â
A stopgap measure is sometimes required in an industry not renowned for its patience. If youâre a manager with a message to get across beyond the borders of your motherland, a little help may be required in the early stages â and thatâs where an interpreter comes in handy. Itâs the role that Graham Turner occupied in the service of Terry Venables when he was in charge at Barcelona in the 1980s. âTerryâs background was very English and his vocabulary was very cockney, so the interpreting was quite challenging,â says Turner. âFor some of the expressions there wasnât an easy equivalent in Spanish.
âRight at the beginning we were working on wing play and he said to me of one player, âTell him to check out!â Well, to explain the detail of that manoeuvre I needed to use about 36 words. So Terry turned to me and said, âAre you telling them your system or my system?â Afterwards I went to the players and said, âIs there an expression we can use for that?â There wasnât so we invented something.â
Turner had to be creative in the dressing room too. âI used to find myself imitating Terryâs gestures because I wanted to get across the tone of the message as well as the content. The half-time talk was probably the most important part of the job, to be honest.â That and issuing instructions from the touchline. âTerryâs modus operandi was to spend the first half up in the stands because he said he got a much better view. That meant during the first half, I was the one who had to do the shouting. Fortunately, I understood the system so it just seemed to come quite naturally â I donât think I put many feet wrong. Though I did get the odd yellow card.â
Turner was with Venables for his entire three-and-a-half-year stint in Spain â does that mean the coach wasnât doing his homework? âTerry is a clever guy so he really did make progress in very good time,â says Turner. âHe didnât need me after a while but we became good friends. Plus, with the media, using an interpreter gave him a bit of a breather â Iâd translate questions to him that heâd already understood, but it would give him time to prepare the answer. How well he could actually speak Spanish was a fairly well-kept secret.â
Less of a secret is how much harder it is for foreign arrivals to integrate with their team-mates in times of Covid. âWe have some players who donât speak German â itâs three times as difficult for them,â says Leipzig manager Julian Nagelsmann. âThey donât have proper German classes. They donât have any contact whatsoever with their team-mates outside football because they are just sitting at home. Itâs always tough for new signings to integrate when you have a very established team, but this year itâs extreme.
âIf you arrive in a new city you want to get settled, go out for dinner, meet people and talk to them. All of that is gone; they are totally isolated. Itâs as if theyâre on trial: no one knows them, no one speaks to them, they sit alone in their hotel room and yet they are expected to perform.â
For Sevilla defender Jules KoundĂ©, performance is directly related to being able to articulate yourself. âIâve always been told that a team that doesnât talk is a team that doesnât win,â says the Frenchman. âItâs part of the life of the team; thatâs why the first thing I did when I got here was take Spanish lessons. First of all because of football, but also because I canât see myself living abroad without trying to learn the language. It shows respect.â
Silva, of course, agrees with that assessment. And he should be in good shape to learn English pretty quickly thanks to his two kids: children pick up languages at a faster rate than adults. Isnât that right, Thiago? âYeah, but they keep laughing at their dad â they donât teach me.â
The universal language. Thatâs how football is pitched by anyone in a poetic mood. Not to say that itâs fanciful â it is, after all, a game that can be played by pretty much anyone, pretty much anywhere, by people who have never previously met and have no chance of understanding the sounds coming out of each otherâs mouths. Let the football do the talking.
And thatâs all well and good for a kickabout on holiday; you neither need nor necessarily want to know what that tanned Italian lad is saying as he nutmegs you for the seventh time. It becomes more of an issue when youâre a professional footballer who has made a move abroad. How else are you going to settle in at your new club, feel at home in a foreign land and subsequently, so the logic goes, play your best football?
âItâs absolutely crucial for integration with the team and society as a whole,â says Peter Clark, owner and director of Clark Football Languages, which provides lessons for players and managers at some of the top teams in Europe. With former pupils including Fabio Capello and Carlo Ancelotti, he goes by a tried-and-trusted method when heâs teaching English. âYou get your really basic vocabulary that you need for everyday life, then I have Peterâs Football Vocabulary List. Simple things like âgo on the overlapâ and âlead the lineâ are new expressions, then youâve got phrases like âhandbagsâ, âgafferâ and âhairdryer treatmentâ that just do not make sense to a foreign player. But they love that stuff: they find it funny and they canât wait to use it at training.â
Of course, not all players feel the need to speak like a native: Sergio AgĂŒeroâs English skills havenât progressed significantly over the course of ten years at Manchester City, for example, while Gareth Bale has rarely been heard speaking Spanish in public during his time at Real Madrid. And Miroslav Klose â assistant manager at Bayern MĂŒnchen, previously a prolific striker and still Germanyâs all-time top scorer â thinks itâs possible for team-mates to have an understanding on the pitch even if they canât fathom each other off it. He cites his time as a player at Bayern, when he arrived in the same 2007 summer as Italian forward Luca Toni and French winger Franck RibĂ©ry. Toni scored ten goals in the first ten games; Klose seven in the first nine.
âIt was great,â says Klose. âThe three of us arrived together and spent the first three months at the hotel, because none of us had found a house. It was a very special time off the pitch but also on it, even though we didnât speak the same language. Thatâs proof enough to show how much is possible in football without being able to communicate. If weâre aware of the right runs on the pitch and everyone looks out for each other, a lot is possible.â
Chelseaâs Brazilian defender Thiago Silva also thinks itâs feasible to make strides on the pitch despite dialogue deficiencies. Heâs not advocating a head-in-the-sand approach to language- learning (he learnt the lingo when he was in Milan and Paris), but does think a football lingua franca is possible while everyone gets up to speed. âIn football we understand a bit of the words about the game,â he says. âSo we speak some English, some French, Italian, Spanish â even Portuguese â in one sentence. We make ourselves understood. The words come out and later I think, âHow was I able to say this or that?â But thatâs my next goal, of course: mastering English like I was able to master Italian and French.â
Alas, thereâs no fast track to fluency. âIt depends on their application, their dedication to learning,â says Clark. He also points to a geographical trend. âIf you look at a Brazilian, Argentinean or Colombian player and then a French or Italian player, the levels of education they will have had is incomparable. For northern Europeans â German, Dutch, Scandinavian players â English is so embedded in their society that often they donât even need lessons.â
A stopgap measure is sometimes required in an industry not renowned for its patience. If youâre a manager with a message to get across beyond the borders of your motherland, a little help may be required in the early stages â and thatâs where an interpreter comes in handy. Itâs the role that Graham Turner occupied in the service of Terry Venables when he was in charge at Barcelona in the 1980s. âTerryâs background was very English and his vocabulary was very cockney, so the interpreting was quite challenging,â says Turner. âFor some of the expressions there wasnât an easy equivalent in Spanish.
âRight at the beginning we were working on wing play and he said to me of one player, âTell him to check out!â Well, to explain the detail of that manoeuvre I needed to use about 36 words. So Terry turned to me and said, âAre you telling them your system or my system?â Afterwards I went to the players and said, âIs there an expression we can use for that?â There wasnât so we invented something.â
Turner had to be creative in the dressing room too. âI used to find myself imitating Terryâs gestures because I wanted to get across the tone of the message as well as the content. The half-time talk was probably the most important part of the job, to be honest.â That and issuing instructions from the touchline. âTerryâs modus operandi was to spend the first half up in the stands because he said he got a much better view. That meant during the first half, I was the one who had to do the shouting. Fortunately, I understood the system so it just seemed to come quite naturally â I donât think I put many feet wrong. Though I did get the odd yellow card.â
Turner was with Venables for his entire three-and-a-half-year stint in Spain â does that mean the coach wasnât doing his homework? âTerry is a clever guy so he really did make progress in very good time,â says Turner. âHe didnât need me after a while but we became good friends. Plus, with the media, using an interpreter gave him a bit of a breather â Iâd translate questions to him that heâd already understood, but it would give him time to prepare the answer. How well he could actually speak Spanish was a fairly well-kept secret.â
Less of a secret is how much harder it is for foreign arrivals to integrate with their team-mates in times of Covid. âWe have some players who donât speak German â itâs three times as difficult for them,â says Leipzig manager Julian Nagelsmann. âThey donât have proper German classes. They donât have any contact whatsoever with their team-mates outside football because they are just sitting at home. Itâs always tough for new signings to integrate when you have a very established team, but this year itâs extreme.
âIf you arrive in a new city you want to get settled, go out for dinner, meet people and talk to them. All of that is gone; they are totally isolated. Itâs as if theyâre on trial: no one knows them, no one speaks to them, they sit alone in their hotel room and yet they are expected to perform.â
For Sevilla defender Jules KoundĂ©, performance is directly related to being able to articulate yourself. âIâve always been told that a team that doesnât talk is a team that doesnât win,â says the Frenchman. âItâs part of the life of the team; thatâs why the first thing I did when I got here was take Spanish lessons. First of all because of football, but also because I canât see myself living abroad without trying to learn the language. It shows respect.â
Silva, of course, agrees with that assessment. And he should be in good shape to learn English pretty quickly thanks to his two kids: children pick up languages at a faster rate than adults. Isnât that right, Thiago? âYeah, but they keep laughing at their dad â they donât teach me.â
The universal language. Thatâs how football is pitched by anyone in a poetic mood. Not to say that itâs fanciful â it is, after all, a game that can be played by pretty much anyone, pretty much anywhere, by people who have never previously met and have no chance of understanding the sounds coming out of each otherâs mouths. Let the football do the talking.
And thatâs all well and good for a kickabout on holiday; you neither need nor necessarily want to know what that tanned Italian lad is saying as he nutmegs you for the seventh time. It becomes more of an issue when youâre a professional footballer who has made a move abroad. How else are you going to settle in at your new club, feel at home in a foreign land and subsequently, so the logic goes, play your best football?
âItâs absolutely crucial for integration with the team and society as a whole,â says Peter Clark, owner and director of Clark Football Languages, which provides lessons for players and managers at some of the top teams in Europe. With former pupils including Fabio Capello and Carlo Ancelotti, he goes by a tried-and-trusted method when heâs teaching English. âYou get your really basic vocabulary that you need for everyday life, then I have Peterâs Football Vocabulary List. Simple things like âgo on the overlapâ and âlead the lineâ are new expressions, then youâve got phrases like âhandbagsâ, âgafferâ and âhairdryer treatmentâ that just do not make sense to a foreign player. But they love that stuff: they find it funny and they canât wait to use it at training.â
Of course, not all players feel the need to speak like a native: Sergio AgĂŒeroâs English skills havenât progressed significantly over the course of ten years at Manchester City, for example, while Gareth Bale has rarely been heard speaking Spanish in public during his time at Real Madrid. And Miroslav Klose â assistant manager at Bayern MĂŒnchen, previously a prolific striker and still Germanyâs all-time top scorer â thinks itâs possible for team-mates to have an understanding on the pitch even if they canât fathom each other off it. He cites his time as a player at Bayern, when he arrived in the same 2007 summer as Italian forward Luca Toni and French winger Franck RibĂ©ry. Toni scored ten goals in the first ten games; Klose seven in the first nine.
âIt was great,â says Klose. âThe three of us arrived together and spent the first three months at the hotel, because none of us had found a house. It was a very special time off the pitch but also on it, even though we didnât speak the same language. Thatâs proof enough to show how much is possible in football without being able to communicate. If weâre aware of the right runs on the pitch and everyone looks out for each other, a lot is possible.â
Chelseaâs Brazilian defender Thiago Silva also thinks itâs feasible to make strides on the pitch despite dialogue deficiencies. Heâs not advocating a head-in-the-sand approach to language- learning (he learnt the lingo when he was in Milan and Paris), but does think a football lingua franca is possible while everyone gets up to speed. âIn football we understand a bit of the words about the game,â he says. âSo we speak some English, some French, Italian, Spanish â even Portuguese â in one sentence. We make ourselves understood. The words come out and later I think, âHow was I able to say this or that?â But thatâs my next goal, of course: mastering English like I was able to master Italian and French.â
Alas, thereâs no fast track to fluency. âIt depends on their application, their dedication to learning,â says Clark. He also points to a geographical trend. âIf you look at a Brazilian, Argentinean or Colombian player and then a French or Italian player, the levels of education they will have had is incomparable. For northern Europeans â German, Dutch, Scandinavian players â English is so embedded in their society that often they donât even need lessons.â
A stopgap measure is sometimes required in an industry not renowned for its patience. If youâre a manager with a message to get across beyond the borders of your motherland, a little help may be required in the early stages â and thatâs where an interpreter comes in handy. Itâs the role that Graham Turner occupied in the service of Terry Venables when he was in charge at Barcelona in the 1980s. âTerryâs background was very English and his vocabulary was very cockney, so the interpreting was quite challenging,â says Turner. âFor some of the expressions there wasnât an easy equivalent in Spanish.
âRight at the beginning we were working on wing play and he said to me of one player, âTell him to check out!â Well, to explain the detail of that manoeuvre I needed to use about 36 words. So Terry turned to me and said, âAre you telling them your system or my system?â Afterwards I went to the players and said, âIs there an expression we can use for that?â There wasnât so we invented something.â
Turner had to be creative in the dressing room too. âI used to find myself imitating Terryâs gestures because I wanted to get across the tone of the message as well as the content. The half-time talk was probably the most important part of the job, to be honest.â That and issuing instructions from the touchline. âTerryâs modus operandi was to spend the first half up in the stands because he said he got a much better view. That meant during the first half, I was the one who had to do the shouting. Fortunately, I understood the system so it just seemed to come quite naturally â I donât think I put many feet wrong. Though I did get the odd yellow card.â
Turner was with Venables for his entire three-and-a-half-year stint in Spain â does that mean the coach wasnât doing his homework? âTerry is a clever guy so he really did make progress in very good time,â says Turner. âHe didnât need me after a while but we became good friends. Plus, with the media, using an interpreter gave him a bit of a breather â Iâd translate questions to him that heâd already understood, but it would give him time to prepare the answer. How well he could actually speak Spanish was a fairly well-kept secret.â
Less of a secret is how much harder it is for foreign arrivals to integrate with their team-mates in times of Covid. âWe have some players who donât speak German â itâs three times as difficult for them,â says Leipzig manager Julian Nagelsmann. âThey donât have proper German classes. They donât have any contact whatsoever with their team-mates outside football because they are just sitting at home. Itâs always tough for new signings to integrate when you have a very established team, but this year itâs extreme.
âIf you arrive in a new city you want to get settled, go out for dinner, meet people and talk to them. All of that is gone; they are totally isolated. Itâs as if theyâre on trial: no one knows them, no one speaks to them, they sit alone in their hotel room and yet they are expected to perform.â
For Sevilla defender Jules KoundĂ©, performance is directly related to being able to articulate yourself. âIâve always been told that a team that doesnât talk is a team that doesnât win,â says the Frenchman. âItâs part of the life of the team; thatâs why the first thing I did when I got here was take Spanish lessons. First of all because of football, but also because I canât see myself living abroad without trying to learn the language. It shows respect.â
Silva, of course, agrees with that assessment. And he should be in good shape to learn English pretty quickly thanks to his two kids: children pick up languages at a faster rate than adults. Isnât that right, Thiago? âYeah, but they keep laughing at their dad â they donât teach me.â
