I Often Wonder.......

......when watching a European soccer game what language all the players are speaking to each other.

In Europe, for example, many people speak two languages due to the small size of the countries and the proximity to other neighboring countries that speak other languages and mixture of cultures, etc, etc......

Take Madrid for example......nowadays at Real Madrid, with 6 Dutch players on the team, one can imagine that a lot of Dutch is heard in the locker room (although they have yet to all play together). But with the escalating number of teams having a very high number of foreigners, i always wonder what language they are arguing, talking, yelling instructions in.

Real Madrid has players from Argentina, Germany, Mali, Italy, Brazil, the afore-mentioned Holland, Portugal, Poland and of course, Spain. But think about the other leagues around the world having Brazilians, Spaniards, Italians, Germans, French, Dutch, Swedes, Russians, Africans, Argentines, Greeks, Turks, etc, etc. Which makes me often wonder what one angry player says to a ref who is most likely a citizen of the country he is "refing" in.

As we all know not every foreigner takes to learning quickly the language of the club that now employs him (as anyone who watched Beckham during his time at Madrid knows, when he insisted on conducting post game press conferences in Spanish, honestly I don't think he was that bad).

Well with last week's red card to Arjen Robben came this article from Spanish daily Marca which provides an answer at least to what an angry Dutchman (who has played in Spain for just over a year) yells at a Spanish ref who has just red carded him (on TV we see the player's arms start waving and flailing and expletives surely start flying).....I can't even imagine how creative these guys get when cursing in all the above languages....or do they?

The article shows you just how eloquent Robben got when the red card came his way......(apologies to those who don't speak Spanish, but I think you can figure out the expletive highlighted in bold text towards the bottom of the article in the referee's quote on what he officially recorded as what was said to him by Robben and thus his reason for showing him his 2nd yellow card).......a very original response indeed. (and if you can't figure it out, this picture may help you see what Robben is about to start saying.....)

And in closing, here's a funny clip of two Hondurans, Wilson Palacios and Maynor Figueroa, who play for Wigan Athletic in England teaching the Brits a little something or another about Spanish....