I'm by no means the world's biggest soccer fan, but I absolutely do love watching soccer
interviews, probably because they're one of the most unintentionally hilarious forms of
entertainment out there. After the final whistle you and the whole teammates you were going to the
south stand, the famous yellow wall, which was empty today, of course, why did you do that?
Why not? Is it kind of message you want to send out? Yes. Would you tell us that message?
To my fans. To their parents. They're everything for you and for Borussia Dortmund. It is.
Thanks a lot, it was a pleasure! Not only that, but as someone who enjoys learning languages,
I'm always fascinated by the quantity of languages the world's top players and managers speak.
A few years back, for example, soccer news site goal.com posted a video of Spanish
football manager Pep Guardiola speaking in the wrong language during an interview.
This video went viral with seven million views and counting. As of filming,
it's the third most popular video on the entire channel. However, upon further investigation,
Pep's interview is not the only language themed video to go viral on Goal's channel. Videos of
Jürgen Klopp refusing to speak English in Germany, Carlo Ancelotti showing off his language skills,
and translators drawing special attention to themselves all ranked similarly among
the most popular videos on the channel. This weekend I watched Take the Ball, Pass the Ball,
a documentary about FC Barcelona's tremendous success under Pep Guardiola's leadership. Not only
was it, next to Senna, one of my favorite sports documentaries of all time, but it also reminded
me of this intersection between languages and soccer. I probably counted at least four languages
being spoken during the documentary including English, Spanish, Italian, and Catalan--many
of them by the same people. So why are there so many polyglots in soccer? A big part of the answer
has to do with how international the sport is. Soccer is by far the world's most popular sport,
with some estimates of the number of fans reaching 3.5 billion--nearly half of the world's
population. Every four years, 200 countries try out for the World Cup, and in 2018, FIFA reported
that 1.1 billion people tuned in to watch France and Croatia play in the final match. Cricket
the world's second most popular sport, has 2.5 billion fans, but much less linguistic diversity
than soccer. This is because its viewership is mostly limited to the UK, South Asia, and a
handful of other former British colonies. Here in America, most professional athletes are American
and sports are mostly a national phenomenon, with the exception of a handful of Canadian-based teams
and the NFL International Series. In Europe, on the other hand, teams are becoming increasingly
international and linguistically diverse. This is in part due to increased migration to Europe over
the past few years, but also due to changes in EU law itself. The 1995 Bosman ruling, for example,
banned restrictions on foreign EU players within national teams and allowed players in the EU to
freely move to another club at the end of their contracts without having to pay a transfer fee.
Some leagues themselves, such as Italy's Serie A and Spain's La Liga place limits on the number
of non-EU players a team may have. However, just by examining individual team rosters,
we can see that the scale still remains tipped in favor of more national and linguistic diversity.
AS Roma's 33 players represent 13 plus native languages. At Newcastle United,
the Premier League's most diverse club, 10 native languages are represented. And the
Bundesliga's Hoffenheim boasts an incredible 17 native languages among the club's 34 players.
This trend repeats itself in North America, where Major League Soccer is the most diverse
professional sporting league with 73 countries of birth represented. During the 2018 World Cup,
only nine teams had more than 50% of their players playing at domestic clubs. Furthermore,
three national teams had all of their players playing at clubs abroad. While you would expect
such a significant level of diversity to have a negative impact on team performance, due to
factors such as language barriers, some studies have actually found the opposite to be true.
One study established a positive correlation between the size of the goal differential
and the number of primary languages spoken among UEFA teams. A similar study of the NBA, however,
found that too much diversity can actually produce a negative effect due to geographical differences
in playing style. In baseball, studies have shown diversity to have little correlation
with team performance, due to baseball's low interdependence. This implies that the effects
of national and linguistic diversity on performance vary from sport to sport,
and soccer is most likely one of the sports whose teams benefit the most from being more diverse.
In any case, soccer clubs operate in environments of extreme linguistic diversity unmatched by
any other sport. On the most basic level, elite players manage this by becoming experts at reading
the non-verbal clues from their teammates and opponents. Italian author and director Pier Paolo
Pasolini, who himself was a soccer player, went as far as to describe the sport as its own language.
Referees overcome language barriers by relying on hand signals to communicate. In fact,
FIFA began using their famous red and yellow cards in 1970 after miscommunication between
speakers of different languages at the 1966 World Cup. At the organizational level, FIFA lists
four official languages for their publications including English, Spanish, French, and German.
However, at the club level most teams will speak their local language as much as possible.
Many clubs employ translators as part of their regular staff and communicate in multiple
languages if necessary. But oftentimes, more experienced players will mentor the recruits
and act as mediators for them while they are attempting to learn the local language. Language
instruction has become an integral part of the training at top clubs and youth programs. Pep
Guardiola, for example, took weeks of intensive German lessons before becoming coach of FC Bayern.
Additionally former Liverpool language coach Alan Redmond has stated that the most dedicated soccer
players have the strongest desire to learn. Those who don't prioritize language learning
simply don't last long at a club. Simply put, language learning is a necessity in
the fast-paced, multicultural environment of soccer. Usually only a select few high-profile
players can stay at a club for an extended period of time without learning the local language,
as was the case with David Beckham after his four years in Madrid.
Because of the importance of foreign languages in soccer, it's no wonder that the sport has so
many polyglots. Of course, polyglotism is not exclusive to soccer. Kobe Bryant, for example,
was fluent in Italian and Spanish, while tennis champion Novak Djokovic speaks 11 languages.
However, there's a particularly high concentration of polyglots among soccer's most elite group of
players. A few years back, a document showing all the languages AS Roma players felt comfortable
giving interviews in circulated around on the internet. Nearly all of them had at least a few
languages listed next to their names, and we have to remember too that this document only
shows the languages that these players are comfortable giving interviews in--meaning
that it's likely that many of them speak a lot of other languages at lower proficiency levels. Pep
Guardiola speaks five languages: English, German, Italian, and his native Spanish and Catalan.
Swedish striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic speak six languages: Swedish, Bosnian, English, Spanish,
Italian, and French. Belgian footballer Romelu Lukaku speaks eight and is quoted as saying "I'll
start a sentence in French and finish it in Dutch and throw in some Spanish, Portuguese, or Lingala,
depending on what neighborhood we're in." Other famous polyglots in soccer include Petr
Cech and Clarence Seedorf at five languages, Jose Mourinho and Philippe Senderos at six languages,
and Arsene Wenger and Henrikh Mkhitaryan at seven languages. Alright guys if you
enjoyed the video, or just want to give me some appreciation for pronouncing all those names,
please hit that like button and let me know down in the comments! If you want to stay updated on
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Thanks for watching and see you next time!
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