Читать книгу Jelleyman’s Thrown a Wobbly: Saturday Afternoons in Front of the Telly - Jeff Stelling - Страница 25

In the modern age, there are so many foreign players plying their trade across the country, but when an exotic-sounding player ends up in an unlikely location, like Rotherham for example, or Sheffield Wednesday in Guylain Ndumbu-Nsungu's case, it adds extra comedy spice. Some of these player-pronunciations are a real mouthful, and, to be honest, you get through it with trial and error. I think that when players come to this country we tend to anglicize their names, which is fair enough. Sometimes the players even do it themselves. For example, we pronounce the name of the crack German side as Bayern Munich, not Bayern München, which is the correct title. And if we pronounced Dirk Kuyt correctly, we'd run the risk of offending every member of the parish, given it sounds uncannily like a swear word Tony Soprano has only ever used once on the telly.

I know the BBC have a pronunciation guide, but crikey, if we stuck to the official pronunciations on Soccer Saturday, the viewers wouldn't have a clue who we were talking about half the time. Anyone who can understand former Evertonian and ex-panellist Peter Reid's scouse dialect would probably have a distinct advantage, however.