Languages Meet the Beautiful Game at King’s

Fact: Cristiano Ronaldo, Kevin De Bruyne, Lucy Bronze and many other football players are multilingual.

Fact: The field of competitive sports requires people to be multilingual, but not just athletes: physiotherapists, player care specialists, finance advisors, marketing employees, grounds maintenance staff, nutritionists, agents or coaches and managers are expected to speak foreign languages.

To mark European Day for Languages, Lower Fifth Spanish students attended a workshop led by Mr Pierce Kiembi, a German retired football player, now a coach for Burnley FC and founder of the Futbol Lingo app. Pierce, a French, German, Lingala, Spanish, English and Portuguese speaker is an advocate for language learning. He has experienced linguistic abilities as a tool for professional progression and success. His message to pupils in today’s workshop was one of hard work, resilience and enjoyment, as he highlighted the value of language skills as a lifelong benefit.

“Aside from football, some jobs like law, criminology and business involve languages more than people think.”

“Pierce Kiembi has demonstrated to me how different languages connect to the game of football. This has inspired me to work harder in Spanish classes as I too want to imbed my learning into the sport I so do enjoy. Also I am quite proud of myself for picking a language for my GCSE.”

“Personally, I would like to go into finance and I think learning languages will help me communicate with people from other countries by connecting with them on a deeper level.”

“(it) opened my eyes to how essential languages, especially Spanish, are in the sports world. I didn’t realise how much knowing a language can impact opportunities for me.”

After the workshop, Mrs Wiltshire discussed combined degrees and language components available in a range of courses in UK universities and further education settings. Pupils are now being encouraged to investigate courses they may wish to apply for in the future: Journalism and Spanish, Biochemistry and French, Sports Management and a Modern Foreign Language, Geography and Latin American Studies, International Relations and Russian, … the world is their oyster.