A Closer Look At How Football Players Adapt To Their New Surroundings

This might not be the first thing that comes to a football fan’s mind, but sometimes it’s amazing how football players learn multiple languages throughout their careers.

 In addition to making tons of money, players also learn foreign languages when playing abroad. So, not only do they play football for a living; but many of them also are multilingual.

Well, to be more precise, it all comes down to the time a player spends in a country and how easily he can pick up new languages.

Players who moved around quite often during their career had such an experience.

 For instance, Manchester City’s Midfielder Yaya Touré has played in six different countries so far. One of them was France, meaning he didn’t have to learn a foreign language, as French is his mother tongue.

I don’t know if he can speak the language of every country he played in, but assuming he can, then that means he speaks six languages. Regardless of how good he is at each of them.  

 Former Arsenal player, Alexander Hleb, has played so far in Belarus, Germany, England, Spain and Russia. As a Belarusian, he probably speaks Russian and maybe Belarusian, and I guess he spent enough time in every other country to learn the language.

 Take for example, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who besides having played in Sweden, he had spells in the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and France. Well, normally he can speak Swedish and English as well as Bosnian and Serbian probably. His Italian is quite good and so is his Dutch I guess. His Spanish though, is a disaster. And after more than a year in France, he still can’t speak the language properly. But hey, he already has five to six languages under his belt. Couldn’t ask for more.

 A perfect example of football players being multilingual is Clarence Seedorf. I don’t know how many languages he speaks in total, but the following video shows him talking in five different languages. English, Dutch, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.

 Just brilliant!

Simon Sammour