The following article appeared in The Sun on May 28th, 2008.

 

Why Fabio already talks a good game

 

JUST four months ago Fabio Capello refused to answer media questions in English, insisting instead on sticking to his native Italian.

But he did pledge to reply in our language as soon as he had mastered it – and that time has come.

Professor David Wray, a linguistics expert at Warwick University, explains: "For a very long time Fabio didn’t speak English in public. But now his everyday English seems confident.

"His pronunciation is strongly accented, and it won’t be easy to lose that accent quickly.

"Capello appears to have a good grasp of English. It could be that he simply didn’t have the confidence to use his language skills and it has taken him a while to build that up.

"It would be hard for the manager of a national team to go on speaking a different language to his players.

"When he’s coaching, Capello will probably be using different technical terms and specialist language to a very high standard. That’s because technical language is easier to learn. You learn a language much faster in context – in his case at the side of the pitch as national team coach.

"However, I haven’t heard him come out with any of the typical manager phrases yet, such as 'sick as a parrot' or 'we done good'.