[lg policy] Sweden: Top flight club bans foreign language use

[Harold Schiffman]

Top flight club bans foreign language use

Published: 10 Mar 10 13:39 CET | Double click on a word to get a translation
Online: http://www.thelocal.se/25452/20100310/


Swedish top flight football club, Brommapojkarna (BP) have introduced
a language policy requiring all players to speak Swedish to each other
in order to be eligible for selection.

    * Swedish football clubs threatened by their fans (3 Oct 10)

"This is a non-issue," BP chairperson Ola Danhard told The Local on Wednesday.

As almost all of BP's players are home grown talent - with 17 of the
23 first team players from its youth set up - Danhard argued that a
language policy was little more than a formality. But Danhard did
confirm that the club's board had voted to establish a policy for the
exclusive use of Swedish within the club, both in its changing rooms
and on the pitch. "It is important for the collective that everyone in
the team speaks the same language," he said.

Danhard told The Local that BP has a very successful youth set-up,
drawing on talent from the greater Stockholm catchment area. He
pointed out that while many of the players are from immigrant families
and are multilingual, all can speak Swedish. "In the changing room if
you are going to use a language then it is much nicer if it is a
language that everybody understands," Danhard said. Danhard told The
Local that they have been working with the issue for some ten years
and there have been no negative reactions to date.

"Like I said, this is a non-issue. We should all speak Swedish within
the club," Ola Danhard said.  Brommapojkerna are widely recognised to
have Sweden's best youth set up, which is the largest in Europe in
terms of the number of active teams of all ages (250). The club's most
famous recent prodigy was Albin Ekdal, who joined Juventus in 2008.

http://www.thelocal.se/25452/20100310/

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