World of Sport

EVEN in my final days as an M.E.N. sport blogger, there’s certainly no downturn in the quality of this blog. (I mean, how could there be?) And to prove it, I present you tonight with a first: Sven-Goran Eriksson giving a Manchester City press conference in Swedish.
Well, OK, strictly speaking, it’s not a first. Back in July, when he was confirmed as City’s manager, Eriksson did a bit of his very first press conference in Swedish, in which he spoke about the chances of signing striker Johan Elmander from Toulouse. (It’s not impossible that may still happen in January, but Eriksson has been linked with practically every striker in Europe bar Roy Race and Dean Windass since the summer, so I’m wary of throwing another name into the pot.)
But that press conference was a special case, as it marked Eriksson’s return to management; it was bound to attract journalists from all over the world. Today was a rare chance for Eriksson to speak in his native language at a regular weekly media briefing, thanks to the presence of a Swedish television journalist.
As someone who can speak basic French very badly (think Edward Heath without the vocabulary) and about 20 words of GCSE-standard German, I’ve always found Eriksson’s multi-lingual abilities astonishing.
Back in August, at a press conference to announce the signings of Elano, Vedran Corluka, Valeri Bojinov and Javier Garrido, Eriksson was mocked when he accidentally referred to Manchester City as Manchester United. The fact that he was translating questions from English into Italian (for Bojinov) and Portuguese (for Elano) was kind of glossed over.
Eriksson was asked this week if he can think in foreign languages now. He admits that he can’t do that in Portuguese, but he can in Italian and English.
It’s hard to tell when you don’t speak the language, but he seemed much more open, much more himself, when speaking in Swedish today. As far as I could tell, he spoke about the state of English football, and whether there are too many foreign players in the Premier League is affecting the quality of the national team. I could be completely wrong.
If you speak Swedish, perhaps you could listen to his answer by clicking the link below and letting me know.
Audio: Sven speaks Swedish