While the rest of the nation’s talking about whether Fabio Capello (pictured here in 1973 when he played for Juventus) has got what it takes to pull off the England job, the North West managers are talking – arguing – about whether he’s got the requisite standard of English.
Yes, says Sven, though he says he speaks to Capello in Italian so that’s no guide. No, says Rafa Benitez, who often starts his weekly press briefings by trying out his latest vocabulary. (“Hee-roglyphics, hy-eroglyphics” he repeated last week, for no apparent reason.) Rafa says Capello needs to brush up because if you “want to express yourself, it is better that you have control”.
He also divulged that he now even thinks in English sometimes and actually struggles to translate into Spanish. Try transcribing his briefings and you’ll know that’s a bit hard to believe.
But Sir Alex Ferguson reckons Capello’s fine – and he isn’t exactly diplomatic about Benitez’s English either. “Rafa didn’t have any English when he came here,” he said. And then he added something so indecipherably Glaswegian that it’s probably safer just to wait and see how Capello’s English lessons progress instead.
Comments