Football has been something that unites people all around the world. Footballers can be seen transcending all barriers and boundaries such as languages, countries, religions, ethnicity, etc. Keeping that in mind let’s take a look at some footballers who speak more languages.
5. Petr Cech – 5 Languages
Along with his native Czech, Cech also speaks English, French, German and Spanish. In 2015, he revealed: ” I speak to the full-backs (Hector Bellerin, Nacho Monreal) in Spanish, to (Laurent) Koscielny in French and to Per (Mertesacker) in English […]”
“Sometimes the foreign player wouldn’t know what you say. That’s when you realize sometimes it’s easier to say it in their language than hoping they will understand.”
4. Jose Mourinho
José Mourinho has won 23 trophies. He speaks 6 languages – English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan. But can someone tell him that when starting a sentence in English it is customary to insert a word such as "it" before the word "is". Is very irritating. Is all. pic.twitter.com/BJPry4K8uw
— Richard Brecker (@RichardBrecker) January 27, 2018
Apart from his native Portuguese, Mourinho speaks Spanish, Italian, French, Catalan, and English. His reputation for knowing so many languages earned him the nickname “the translator”, a moniker he didn’t like much.
3. Zlatan Ibrahimovic – 6 Languages
Zlatan Ibrahimovic abuses referees in languages they don’t understand http://t.co/ueTMFgrI9V pic.twitter.com/NU7KzC7RHx
— Telegraph Football (@TeleFootball) February 7, 2015
The “God of Miami” has sported the colors of quite a few clubs till date; the likes of FC Barcelona, Paris Saint-Germain, Juventus and Ajax to name a few. Ibrahimovic can speak quite a few languages including Swedish, Bosnian, French, Spanish, Italian, and English.
As if that is not enough, he can also hear sign languages and is fluent in braille
2. Henrikh Mkhitaryan – 7 Languages
H.Mkhitaryan is the only player in the world to speak seven languages. Armenian, Russian, English, French, German, Italian and Portuguese. pic.twitter.com/QL1bDm4DJ0
— Josh🇳🇱 (@AGriezSZN) March 4, 2017
No list of multi-linguistic footballers is complete without the inclusion of this man. Henrikh Mkhitaryan puts almost every footballer on this list to shame. The guy can fluently speak: Armenian, German, English, Russian, Italian, French, and Portuguese.
1. Romelu Lukaku – 8 Languages
The framed United shirt.
— B/R Football (@brfootball) March 6, 2019
His own personal recording studio.
A 🔥 FIFA set up.
And his fridge straight out of 3019.
Join @TaylorRooks for a tour of @RomeluLukaku9's house pic.twitter.com/MUgw7TMKpd
Born in Antwerp in Belgium from Congolese parents he learned two languages from the get-go: French, Lingala and the Swahili variant of Congolese. Growing up in Belgium, he was also bound to pick up Dutch.
Lukaku also learned English and Spanish in School, so by the time he made his debut for Anderlecht in the Belgian Top Division at age 16, Lukaku could make himself understood in 6 languages.
At Anderlecht, he had several Brazilian teammates, and after a while, he could add Portuguese to his language list on his CV. That’s 7. He can also understand the German language. And should we count Flemish as a language or a dialect? Lukaku is a real definition of “hyperpolyglot”.
