While listening to an old David Beckham press conference in which he managed a few sentences in Spanish, I wondered: do most foreign soccer players learn the language of their country of adoption and address the press and public in such language? Do you have any examples of someone who totally refused to do so?
I may be wrong, and if so please tell me, but I guess that things would be pretty smooth in the UK since most international players already have notions of English. But what about players going to Germany, Italy, Spain, France, and the like?
As an Texan who played youth soccer in a league that was about a 60-40 Anglo-Hispanic split, and 40-60, on my team, I learned some basic soccer Spanish.
Not fluent, everyone on that team which was together for a number of years spoke English fluently, except for one guy who wasn’t quite proficient in conversational, but spoke enough for soccer. But I understood (beware atrocious spelling) “linia” and “pass ala ___” and some other stuff.
Players would generally use English, but understanding both languages helped out both working with my team, and against teams where Spanish was the only language spoken.
So - I guess that’s support for the idea of learning enough to get by in the sport.
I can’t imagine that they would learn any less than anyone else taking up a job in a different country. Apart from the football elite who can afford to be surrounded by personal assistants and translators 24/7, they’re going to have to get the hang of the language just to get through everyday life.
Not football but rugby - the language school where the wife works has a poster featuring a dozen players from the country’s premier rugby division which says (in French) “Be like them : Learn French”. The players are from places like Italy, Argentina, South Africa, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, Wales, Scotland etc. Certainly the Paris team prides itself on using only French despite the fact that a third of the squad are “foreign”.
I can’t remember the exact clubs, but there have been cases of dressing room tension caused by groups of players who speak only non-english.
Jose Morinho complained that Andre Shevchenko would speak russian with Roman Abramovich, which Morinho couldn’t follow - one of the reasons Sheva didn’t get much love during the last couple of seasons at Chelski.
Michael Owen really struggled to learn any spanish at Real Madrid - he wanted to, but just could not get the hang of it. That was one of the major reasons he came back to the UK - he was totally isolated in the dressing room, and had no friends in Madrid.
He contrasted his situation with Jonathan Woodgate, who learnt spanish v. quickly and was soon nattering away like a native.
The famous Colombian striker Julio Geordio couldn’t speak a word of English during the post-match interview following his first game (55 sec video) for Newcastle. As can be seen from the interview after his second game (85 sec video), Geordio’s language skills improved out of all proportion in a very short space of time.