Paul Gascoigne has long since hung up his boots and Jamie Carragher is enjoying his self-imposed international retirement. But, even without the pair intonating through team meetings in their respective broad Geordie and abrasive Scouse dialects that even team-mates have said are, at times, incomprehensible, Fabio Capello has admitted that he is still struggling to get the hang of the northern accents in his England squad.
The Italian reflected on his progress so far in his adopted country in an interview with Sky Italia last night and, while the cliché insists that football is actually a universal language, he conceded that the finer points of some of his players' inflection remain something of a mystery. "I must admit I have a little trouble understanding northerners," said Capello, who hails from San Canzian d'Isonzo in Gorizia, northern Italy, where some of the locals speak Friulian and others even prefer Venetian. "When we talk about football, the vocabulary is fairly limited. But when we get away from that it becomes more difficult."
The remark was delivered tongue in cheek with the Italian having grown used to seeing his side inspired by the Merseyside twang of Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney. They have been joined by Michael Carrick, a Wallsend boy, in recent times, with Wes Brown, from Longsight, Manchester, and James Milner, of Wortley in Leeds, swelling the squad's northern contingent. It is unclear whether Capello would count the likes of Gabriel Agbonlahor, a favourite son of Birmingham, or Emile Heskey of Leicester as northern', even if they hail from appreciably further north than Soho Square.
Data Source : Guardian.co.uk
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