All the moaning about the "Anglicisation" of the already-English Mars Bar pales into insignificance next to the blatant discrimination being shown by the team of Brazilian match officials assigned to England's opener against the USA:
"In anticipation of the Manchester United forward's customary fruity invective, the referee and his assistants for the Group C match in Rustenburg have each undertaken a crash course in English swear words with a view to clamping down on foul and abusive language in the fixture."
Now I understand that both teams will be speaking roughly the same language, so there's a balance there, but this comment by assistant referee Roberto Braatz speaks volumes:
"We can't do this in 11 different languages, but at least we have to know the swear words in English."
Now that's clear discrimination. You should either do it in all 11 languages or in none of them, Roberto. You're a FIFA official, you should be totally impartial, you should know better.
Will the officials in all of the other matches be so inclined? Time will tell.
Source
THE SMALL(ish) PRINT... (updated 23/07/2016)
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Free Speech: you may well have the right to it, but you've no right to compel me to a) listen to it, or b) publish it!
The solution is clearly for the English team to learn to swear in Outer Mongolian *g*
LOL, PW
I checked the FIFA list of referees, Juan Kerr isn't on it 🙄
Isn't Rooney an Irish name? He could swear in Gaelic - we could send Denis Pidgeon out there to train them up - he's a master in that fine language. Or Hump3. (Does he do Irish?)
There are a few ironies here...
1. Of the three Brazilian FIFA officials doing the honours for this match, the two linesmen DO speak English but the ref doesn't - see http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/r.....index.html
2. Fabio Capello doesn't speak English either, and the three officials don't speak Italian - they could rant at each other all day long to no avail.
3. Learning English profanity won't be of much use to the officials anyway - Rooney's accent is, well, let's just say it's a long way from Etonian 😯
It'll be all right for the evening kick offs. If Wayne can wait until the second half before he starts swearing, it'll probably be after the 9pm watershed.
😈
I wonder what the Italian for 'butterfingers' is?
Love your blog, beardie. I edit a travel site, wideworldmag.com, and we're hosting a special blog awards competition this summer - I'd love to nominate yours, if you're interested? Drop me a line and I'll fill you in on the details (don't worry, it's utterly, wonderfully free of charge - we're a right bunch of hippies really).
persona dalle mani di pasta frolla, according to Google translate. Doesn't exactly trip off the tongue, does it? I'd imagine that Capello asked Rooney for a suitably-short Anglo-Saxon alternative.
Cheers for that about the awards thing, I'll email you sometime soon.
Enough of this footy chatter.
Lets have some pics of this 'ere comet we are all supposed to be able to see at the moment!
OK, Boss, I'll see what I can do.