Watching the World Cup has made me wonder how the opposing teams communicate with the opposing team or with the referee. Like in the final today the teams were Germany and Brazil. The referee was Italian. That is at least three different languages (German, Portuguese, and Italian). Several times it appeared that players from either team would be talking with each other or with the ref. Like at halftime Kahn (Germany’s goalie) and the Italian ref (his name escapes me) looked like they were talking as they went into the tunnel. Were they actually talking or mostly gesturing and speaking in their native tongue to which the other would just guess what they are saying?
Also in the same vein what happens when a Korean player gets picked up by a German club team? Does the player just have to learn German or do they get a translator?
“Exotic” players usually have to adapt to the country they’re going to.
However, I think it’s fair to say most of the player-to-ref conversations in today’s final happened in plain English. I think it’s a FIFA requirement for all refs at the word cup to speak at least some basic English.
There may be exceptions: since Oliver Bierhoff plays in the Italian Serie A, he might have addressed Colina in Italian. But I’d say the default is English. Bear in mind, a lot of the terminology is already in English, and is often unaltered in other languages (or at the very least well known). Penalty, corner, offside, foul… I think all players at the world cup know those words.
And I thought we were going to compete for being the first to use phrases such as:
‘it’s a game of two halves’
‘I’m over the Moon’
‘I’m sick as a parrot’
‘we came for a result’
However, on topic, I agree with Coldfire.
The language of chess is also English (and top players usually discuss the game afterwards in detail for some time), although Russian comes in second.
Also don’t underestimate the power in football of the gesture (he dived, ref!).
Uhh, Mr. Moto - We in the US may refer to it as soccer (and then for some reason refer to another sport in which the players carry the ball in their hands all day as “football”), but the the rest of the world refers to the sport where you move the ball with your feet as “football”. And they’re about as interested in converting from their sports names to ours as they are in converting from the metric system to ours.
Mr. Moto: ok, i’ll give you a little of the flaming (but not much) that you ask for.
The nice thing about the internet is that it has no geographical borders whatever. So where the SDMB servers or business offices are located is not relevent, in most cases, to topics discussed on the board.
Since football means, in fact, football–and it is only called soccer in a few places, it indeed makes more sense to refer to it as football rather than soccer.
now on the OP–
IMO English if often used as a common language between footballers of different native tongues. Practically speaking though, one just uses whatever language that all parties of the conversation best understand.
Most top level referees speak 2 or 3 languages (often english, spanish, french) at least well enough to communicate simple commands on a football pitch. Between those three languages, most international footballers can understand the gist of the conversation.
FIFA by the way is a French acronym (Federation International de Football Association)-- i believe french used to be (still is?) the language of record for FIFA also.
Language problems are one of the reasons that football referees use such exaggerated hand signals. Lots of waving of fingers and showing yellow cards high in the air.
You want to make sure everyone gets the message, both on the field and in the crowd.
Why is the “official” language, English, though? Is it because football began in the UK and spread through British imperialism to the other countries? You’d think the official language would be Spanish or something. But maybe that’s just because I watch the game on Telemundo…
Didn’t native mexicans have some football-like games? I always thought it was a sport that always just “was”
Small nitpick: Bierhoff played for Monaco in the French First Division last season. He did play in Serie A for Udinese and Milan in prior seasons but now looks to be out of contract.
ZipperJJ, football is generally believed to have originated in ancient Greece as Harpaston. As with anything Greek, the Romans shamelesly copied it.
In medieval times, a game called calcio was played in Italy. But the modern form of football is indeed English, and dates back to the 1840’s when the Cambridge Rules were put in place.
I am not a lipreader (probably just as well), but I am certain that numerous coaches were shouting “REF!!!” at the tops of their voices every time they disagreed with a decision.
Some players, and indeed some coaches, working for a club in a foreign country do get translators appointed for them if the club thinks it’s worth the expense and they don’t have a grasp of the indiginous language.
And Germany’s goalkeeper, Oliver Kahn, was clearly yelling “what’s up, what’s up” at an opposing forward who got in his face (not the U.S. game, I think it was Paraguay).
A point I’ve made in other threads is that English is a de facto international auxillary language. Far more often than not, when well-traveled people (like football players) of different nationalities are thrown together, English will be the language in which they converse. This goes double when you have Asians and Europeans communicating amongst themselves.
This question is for all people Non-Americans (I must clarify since a Costa Rican claimed that they view themselves as Americans too–all people not currently living in or from the USA):
What is your opinion of American Football? Is NFL Europe popular/enjoyable to watch? And, do you get to see many NFL games?
Welcome aboard the boards Yochanan, but instead of hijacking this thread I’m sure you’ll get a much better response if you launch your own thread with a suitable title.
