Sixteen confused players shipped off to language school

As Paul Whitehouse eloquently demonstrated, it can be difficult to communicate in a dressing room where the majority of players don’t speak English as a first language. Accordingly, sixteen of Portsmouth’s 28-man squad will be sent back to school to learn how to speak proper like:

The crash courses concentrate on how to speak ‘Football English’, learning basic expressions of the game.

Polyglot Solutions, a language school based in Southsea, Hants, has been working with Pompey to ensure players can communicate with each other amid the pressure of a match.

Multi-lingual entrepreneur Dr Jay Kettle-Williams is in charge of the project, which aims to bring players from zero knowledge to a good grasp of football English in just eleven hours.

It will also concentrate on helping Nadir Belhadj and co understand Harry’s cockney vernacular: when he screams “push up into the apples and pairs” [opponent’s half] or “play the striker apples and pears” [offside], they should know exactly what he is talking about.

When the players are all speaking fluent ‘Arry, incidents like the one in the video above should be avoided.

[Daily Mail]