Spanish in Africa: football, television and pop
El miamiense, the hateful Spanish pop
The solitude of empty stadiums has allowed us to discover the intimate sound of football.
Sometimes there are surprises: isn't it a bit strange that Kylian Mbappé, a Frenchman from Paris who has never lived in a Spanish-speaking country, yells at Sergiño Dest (an American born in the Netherlands) "Don't touch me", like this , in Spanish and, later, he faces Jordi Alba with the words "On the street I kill you", also said in Spanish, with a fairly clear pronunciation?
Isn't it funny
e Antoine Griezmann, another Frenchman who in recent years has lived in San Sebasián, Madrid and Barcelona, uses expressions from the River Plate (
"your mother's shell"
) to defend himself against the reproaches of his captain? All this happened last Tuesday in a Champions League match (FC Barcelona-Paris Saint Germain) and serves to raise a hypothesis: the Spanish language is a lingua franca in international football, a means of communication in which
almost everyone has some competition,
no matter how small, and that is used almost anywhere.
"I think that only with Spanish can you defend yourself in international football"
, says Predrag Mijatovic, a former Montenegrin footballer for Valencia CF and Real Madrid.
"In my time it was more difficult, I came to Spain without having had any contact with Spanish before. But
now, all the boys have watched series in Spanish, watch Spanish soccer and are familiar with the vocabulary
"More testimonies:" In a Russian League match you hear Russian speaking, obviously, in English and also in Spanish, because Spanish is the language in which Latin Americans, Portuguese, Spanish and Italians are understood, "explains Dmitry Zelenov, spokesman for the Russian Football League. "And his teammates endorse many Spanish words.
10 years ago, more or less, the CSKA
He had 15 people in the team, Spanish or Latin American ... More Valery Karpin, who had lived in Spain for many years
.
The training sessions were full of phrases in Spanish: 'Come on, run, pass ...'.
It is an exaggerated example but it is a sample of how the Spanish vocabulary of soccer spread in Russia. "Spanish is, therefore, the second international language on the fields, always behind English." I also have the experience of training in New Dehli and find that
Indian players asked us to teach them the Spanish soccer vocabulary
.
It was part of the illusion of being footballers, "explains coach Miguel Ángel Portugal." I trained them in English, but then it turned out that there were players who didn't know English well, they only spoke Hindi.
So you had to manage and mix words anyway. "Portugal did high school when in Spain they were still studying French." When I started playing with Real Madrid,
English was already the language of international matches.
I did not know English but I learned with Laurie Cunningham the minimum to survive.
Later, as a coach, I already worried about studying.
I have trained in India in English, in Algeria in French and in Brazil in Portuguese.
No language I speak perfect but I work with the language of football.
I've had a worse time in interviews, not in training
"." I had studied Russian at school and knew some Italian because the Italian television signal arrived in Montenegro, "recalls Mijatovic." My native language is very difficult, so Italian first and Spanish later seemed very easy.
Three months after arriving in Valencia, I gave an interview in Spanish.
I guess it was a disaster but I didn't care if they corrected me and people found it nice
.
In English I managed with a few words to speak with the referees and with the rivals.
And I managed because I was one of those players who don't stop talking in matches. "The referees, by the way, have a duty to speak in English in international matches." But at Juventus-Porto this week,
we clearly saw Cristiano Ronaldo address Del Cerro Grande in Spanish
[the match referee] ", explain sources from the RFEF College of Referees." An international referee has to accredit English and start any European match in English.
Then, if the players speak to him in Spanish, it is normal for him to reply in Spanish. "Do the clubs require their players to learn the local language?" In Russia, all contracts have a clause that commits them to speak Russian.
But
I don't think there are more than five footballers who have learned Russian in the last few years
", Zelenov explains. Obviously,
the case sounds similar to that of Lionel Messi and the Catalan
.
"It is not that we push for the players to learn Spanish, pressure is not the word. We do put the means to adapt them as quickly as possible. We offer them a teacher and little by little they learn. It has not been the case that do not want to learn ", explains a representative of Real Valladolid." Everyone learned something in my time. Some more and others less, but
I don't remember anyone who refused
"recalls Mijatovic." I trained a South African at Racing, Morris, who there was no way he learned.
Usually,
English speakers make less effort to learn, have fewer incentives
"Recalls Miguel Ángel Portugal. In basketball, for example, teams from all over Europe train in English. The American players are many and they often go through international basketball without learning languages because they do not need it either for work or for social life In cycling, on the other hand, French has been the lingua franca until very recently and still retains its prestige. At bottom, it is all a question of money: in football in the 90s, Italian had the international presence that today he has spanish because
the best contracts were made in Italy
.
Today the money is in England and the players are studying English in hopes of making it to the Premier League.
Spanish is a sophistication that is appreciated, although it is used later to say: "In the street, I kill you."
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