How does adapting to a new language or culture create a barrier for goalkeepers moving into English football?
Header image: Nottingham Forest FC
Goalkeepers experience a level of isolation. Unlike their outfield teammates, who are required to press opposition players, maintain tactical shapes, and instantaneously receive the ball anywhere on the pitch, goalkeepers can view the game with, at least to some extent, clarity.
Goalkeepers, of course, are not exempt from these responsibilities. The modern game places more emphasis than ever on the goalkeeper’s role beyond shot stopping, with their contributions to build-up play pivotal to helping their team up the pitch. Nonetheless, the relative separation goalkeepers experience from the rest of the play enables them to perceive the game more clearly than their outfield counterparts.
For this reason, the communicative abilities of goalkeepers are fundamental to maintaining defensive shape as they relay advanced tactical information and motivate teammates.
Communication within football’s elite level, where squads consist of various cultures, languages, and personality types, is a more intricate, complex art than credited for.
In the eyes of elite coaches, goalkeepers should be able to relay advanced tactical knowledge to their teammates, irrespective of their ability to fluently speak the team’s language or fully understand the patterns of play, trained over several years.
As Dino Zoff, one of the few goalkeepers to embark on a career in football management, emphasised:
“A goalkeeper must have authority. He must be able to communicate, organise, and direct.”
This summer’s transfer window has seen six goalkeepers join new Premier League clubs, creating, in each case varying, communicative barriers that will need resolving to enjoy fruitful periods at their respective new clubs.
Few, if any, goalkeepers in the Premier League will have to overcome greater cross-cultural, communication barriers than Nottingham Forest’s new £3.4 million goalkeeper, Carlos Miguel.
The 25-year-old Brazilian goalkeeper has never played in an English-speaking country previously and conducted his obligatory introduction video on the Nottingham Forest YouTube channel in Portuguese. This tends to be customary for players learning the language in the early days.
Miguel does reportedly speak limited English. However, fluent tactical dialogue will likely pose several difficulties for the towering 6"8 goalkeeper.
So, how do clubs navigate these barriers? Creating a degree of cultural homogeneity within dressing rooms is one way. Nottingham Forest manager Nuno Espirito Santo, a native Portuguese speaker, can communicate with Miguel with cultural efficiency, even if English-spoken team meetings go over his head.
The goalkeeper will also have several Portuguese-speaking teammates, including fellow countrymen Murillo, a highly rated 22-year-old centre-back, and Danilo, a 23-year-old defensive midfielder who arrived in January 2024, who he can communicate easily with on the pitch.
Wolves tried a similar strategy in their promotion winning Championship campaign in 2017/18, signing no fewer than nine Portugese-speaking players to work under Espirito Santo that year. Interestingly, however, three of Wolves' four most-featured defenders that season were native English speakers, aligning with first choice goalkeeper John Ruddy.
Ryan Bennett, Matt Douherty, and Barry Douglas hailed from England, the Republic of Ireland, and Scotland. Danny Bath also made 15 appearances that year in defence. The only defender with a strong run of appearances who did not hail from the British Isles was Frenchman Willy Boly (36).
It is not rare for goalkeepers to communicate with defenders in a non-English language during Premier League matches. Ederson, who has since gone on to be regarded among the highest-performing goalkeepers in Premier League history, bellowed on-pitch instructions to former Manchester City defender Nicolas Otamendi in Spanish when he first arrived in England.
Speaking to Manchester City’s official website in 2017, he said: “Obviously, communication is key. In some games, I speak a little bit in Spanish with Nico, but I’ve learned a bit of English and that has helped me a lot, too”
Meanwhile, Chelsea’s new Swedish-born goalkeeper, Filip Jorgensen, a £20.7 million arrival from Villarreal, is the only other stopper set to start the new season without previously playing on English soil.
Jorgensen, as with many Scandinavians, is fluent in English. In theory, the switch to West London should be relatively seamless – after all, he told Chelsea’s official website the transfer was a ‘dream move.’
The goalkeeper has a Danish father and Swedish mother; he spent his formative years playing in Spain and has four languages at his disposal to communicate with Chelsea’s various new signings, something that should hold him in good stead ahead of the upcoming Premier League season.
But Jorgensen and many of his Chelsea teammates will experience communicative barriers at Stamford Bridge. Effective on-field communication is developed through repetition, consistency, and a strong culture, enabling relationships and compatibility to build among the goalkeeper and his defenders.
Chelsea currently have eight goalkeepers in and around the first team. The likelihood of regular first-team exposure for Jorgensen, enabling the facilitation of relationships with his defence, is unlikely, with Robert Sanchez expected to start the season as the first-choice goalkeeper.
Even if Jorgensen is given an extended run in the first team, it feels improbable that the 22-year-old will be walking into a settled line-up, given the excess of talent Chelsea possess elsewhere on the pitch, where communication can flow efficiently between goalkeeper and defence.
Liverpool’s ever-reliable Alisson Becker, who arrived on Merseyside with little understanding of the English language, was praised by former manager Jurgen Klopp for his dedication to quickly integrating into the culture and picking up the language.
Clubs at the elite level go a long way to helping new players settle in to new environments. The language barrier is perhaps the biggest obstacle to overcome. Goalkeepers are human beings, and are entering a new cultural environment, often with families at their side.
Brentford's Mark Flekken, speaking to Goalkeeper.com, made the move to the English game last summer with his family.
“When we have changed clubs within Germany, everything would have been more or less on autopilot because I've played 14 years in Germany so I was used to everything in there”, he explains, discussing the differences between moving within a country and abroad in a transfer move.
"When I got to England, that was all just completely different. Everything you did you needed help or some explanation. It's a different language, although we speak a fair share of English, as people in the Netherlands do as well, so it's not a completely strange language. But still finding the right terms and stuff like that when you speak to other people in the UK, it still takes getting used to.
"You need help with a lot. Schools are different. Finding a place to live wasn't that easy in London. We knew before the end of the season that we would change clubs to Brentford. So we had some things already planned ahead.
“I took me a while longer than I would have hoped for to get used to it, get settled. Luckily, at this point, I can say I'm finally settled, and my family are well”, he concludes.
