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68
69
the
manager
Winter 2011
— opinion —
LMA PEOPLE
those 650 young men found moving to
the UK quite a shock to their system.
The biggest hurdle they usually face
is, of course, the language barrier. This
wasn't too much of a problem for me
back in 1978; I had studied English
in Argentina for about eight years,
so I had a pretty good base to work
from (although many of my former
teammates still tell me that they can't
understand me today). Ricky, however,
did not speak a word of English when
we arrived and, as a result, it took
him longer to settle in properly; in
fact, I would say that he didn't really
feel at home until after he scored that
beautiful goal in the 1981 FA Cup
final. Ricky is a very sociable person
and needs to talk – much more than
I do – so he felt very isolated and
frustrated and I think it was difficult
for him, even though I was able to act
as a translator for him at first.
But even though I could speak
English (and made a point of reading
an English newspaper every day) I still
found that there were huge cultural
differences which made fitting in quite
a challenge. For example, it's very
difficult to translate humour from one
language to another;
Fawlty Towers
is
now one of my all-time favourite TV
programmes, but when I first arrived in
Just before
the beginning of this
season I read that there were 650
overseas players registered to play in
the Barclays Premier League, from a
total of 68 countries. This made me
smile a little, as I remembered how
Ricky Villa and I were treated as
some sort of rare and exotic species
when we first signed for Tottenham
Hotspur after our country's success in
the 1978 World Cup.
Although we were generally made
very welcome through the whole
country, there is one reception that I
will never forget. In one of my early
games with Tottenham, we travelled
up to Liverpool for a League Cup
game where Tommy Smith put me
out of the game with a terrible tackle.
The next day in the newspaper he
was quoted as saying: “Welcome to
English football”. Football was very
different back then.
But it wasn't just football that
was different; Ricky and I found
it difficult to take to the weather
and our adopted country's food
and we could never get used to the
fact that there was nothing to do
on Sunday because everything was
closed. Luckily, we quickly built up
a large circle of Argentinian friends
who we used to see on Sundays for
barbecues... which solved two of
those problems at a stroke.
Now we're in the 21st Century,
things have moved on and almost
all of the problems we faced do not
trouble the modern player (with the
exception of the weather, of course)
but I suspect that a large number of
With the January transfer window sure to bring a new influx of foreign talent to the
English game, World Cup winner and well-travelled manager Ossie Ardiles reveals what
it was like to be at the forefront of English football's foreign invasion
the voice of
experience
argentina legend
discusses the pros
and cons of the
international
career path
“Working
across a
variety of
countries
brings both
challenges
and rewards”
Ricky Villa (left) and Ossie Ardiles pose
outside White Hart Lane in July 1978