The World Cup’s unlikely linguists

{"text":[[{"start":5.05,"text":"When Roberto Lopes, a footballer playing in his hometown of Dublin, received a message in Portuguese on LinkedIn, he ignored it, thinking it might be spam. Months later, the sender nudged him in English. That’s when Lopes pasted the original message into Google Translate. It was from the manager of Cape Verde, his father’s home country, asking if he was interested in playing for them. “I messaged him as quick as I could,” recalls Lopes. Now he’s at the World Cup with Cape Verde."}],[{"start":33,"text":"This is a World Cup for the era of globalisation. Language is a central issue in many squads. Most African countries recruit players from their European diasporas. Even European squads include men who aren’t fluent in their team’s language, such as France’s winger Michael Olise, a Londoner with a French-Algerian mother, or Poland’s full-back Matty Cash, an Englishman with Polish grandparents. Some countries, such as Belgium, have multiple languages. How do teams cope? "}],[{"start":61.3,"text":"Football clubs first became multilingual workplaces after the European Court of Justice ruled in 1995 that EU citizens could play professional sport in any EU country. Some of the first multinational teams were siloed by language. Early this century, Chelsea’s training ground consisted of six small dressing rooms. The “English section” included Icelander Eidur Gudjohnsen. Beyond that, recounted English midfielder Frank Lampard, “there was an Italian room, a French room and the rest of the world. It was a terrible set-up . . . and didn’t help at all in building and promoting the team spirit.” Brazil’s Italian manager Carlo Ancelotti recalls coaching Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) from 2011 to 2013: “First you tell the Italians, in Italian, then you tell the Brazilians, in pseudo-Italian, and then you tell Beckham, with grunts and gestures.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":114.4,"text":"But as football professionalised, clubs and players realised that a shared language was an almost essential working tool. Boudewijn Zenden, a cosmopolitan former Dutch footballer I once saw speaking Bahasa Indonesian, says: “Everything goes with the language.” Players will struggle in weeks of seclusion in a team camp with just translation apps."}],[{"start":135,"text":"Occasionally, teams employ translators: José Mourinho got his big break as a young interpreter for English manager Bobby Robson at Sporting in Lisbon, while Cameroon’s Soviet coach Valery Nepomnyashchy oversaw their 1990 World Cup quarter-final run while communicating through a Cameroonian translator who worked as a driver at the country’s embassy in Moscow. But, by all reports, Cameroon’s players regularly ignored the translated instructions. Football remains a sphere of direct, person-to-person communication. "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":167.4,"text":"Even footballers playing in their home country can benefit from multilingualism. Kylian Mbappé learned fluent Spanish at PSG long before joining Real Madrid. It helped with his South American teammates, he told me. “It’s important to speak multiple languages if you’re playing with players of international dimensions.” He noted that languages also helped him handle referees. "}],[{"start":189.5,"text":"Belgium’s striker Romelu Lukaku said when moving to Italy: “It’s important for me to express myself to my teammates. How I want the ball. Where I want the ball . . . I have to know those exact words in Italian because the subtleties are different in every language.” "}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":205.5,"text":"Lukaku grew up in Brussels, where he said he used to “start a sentence in French and finish it in Dutch, and . . . throw in some Spanish or Portuguese or Lingala, depending on what neighbourhood we’re in”. Multilingualism has helped Belgians succeed in club football, argued their previous manager, the Spaniard Roberto Martínez, who now coaches Portugal. “When I was managing in the Premier League, you knew you could sign a Belgian, and he’d adapt to your dressing room straightaway.” Under Martínez, the Belgian team’s working language was English. Their current French coach Rudi Garcia prefers French, but players still often speak English among themselves. Their official slogan is also in English: “We are Belgium.” "}],[{"start":248.15,"text":"Even British footballers, once famously monolingual, now learn languages. England captain Harry Kane has worked hard on his German at Bayern Munich, while winger Anthony Gordon spoke good Spanish at his presentation by new club Barcelona last month. Scotland’s midfielder Scott McTominay, who plays for Napoli, has at least managed a few words of Italian in interviews."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":271.3,"text":"The careers of some leading coaches were enabled by linguistic excellence. Ancelotti learned several languages after leaving Italy aged fifty. England’s German manager Thomas Tuchel speaks better English than many English managers. "}],[{"start":286.55,"text":"Most coaches and players at this World Cup are therefore multilingual but adaptable. Some teams impose a national language — for Cape Verde, Lopes has learned the national Creole. Their coach, Bubista, says, “Sometimes the guys try to speak other languages among themselves, but I don’t allow it, to keep our Cape Verdean identity intact.” Other squads are more flexible. Morocco and Algeria use French and Arabic, sometimes mixed (even in the same sentence) with other languages. "}],[{"start":317.7,"text":"Some multinational businesses could learn from the linguistic sophistication of football teams."}],[{"start":329.40000000000003,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1781399550_4363.mp3"}