“It’s like a cold shoulder to your English fans,” said Gary Cotterill as Ruben Amorim politely declined the Sky Sports reporter’s request to answer his question in English.
It is precisely because he wants to avoid giving fans the cold shoulder that Amorim opted against bowing to Cotterill’s ludicrous demand and wasn’t moved by his cringey, nonsensical attempt to bully him into changing his mind.
Just imagine the furore if Amorim had been on the verge of moving from Manchester United to Sporting and answered a question ahead of the Red Devils’ biggest game of the season in Portuguese.
The club, players and fans would have been furious, and rightly so, and Cotterill – a man famed for his outspoken and unapologetically brash approach to sports reporting – would almost certainly be chief among those peddling his lack of respect to the club he still manages.
Here’s the excruciating exchange in full:
Cotterill: “You could be a hero even before you get on a plane to Manchester. Has that crossed your mind?…… In English please.”
Amorim: “Mmm sorry, I cannot speak in English now.”
Cotterill: “Why?”
Amorim: “Sorry.”
Cotterill: “Why?”
Amorim (gesturing to the other reporters): “They will miss in Portuguese so I have to speak in Portuguese.”
Cotterill: “They’ve had about 25 minutes in Portuguese. We want ten seconds in English.”
Sporting media representative: “We’ll proceed in Portuguese. Next week you can hear him talking in English.”
Cotterill: “It’s like a cold shoulder to your English fans.”
Amorim (laughing nervously): “Sorry.”
We got our native Portuguese speaker here at Football365 to translate Amorim’s answer – we’ve got bilinguists on retainer to cover all the European leagues for occasions like this when foreign players or coaches refuse to speak The Queen’s – and he gave an interesting response, explaining that he knows he will be judged by many solely on this game before making a tongue-in-cheek quip about links being inextricably made with Sir Alex Ferguson if his Sporting side claim victory over Manchester City.
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He provided two lines worthy of headlines in a few sentences. As journalists frequently let down by dry press conferences and humdrum responses, we couldn’t ask for anything more and rather than reprimanding him for not speaking English, Cotterill should be thanking Amorim for providing him with an answer at all.
The Sporting manager – because he’s the manager of Sporting and not Manchester United – would have been well within his rights simply to state his pure focus on the job at hand. Less amenable managers would have said nothing.
Amorim asked if it was possible to delay his move to Old Trafford until the summer, when he had told the Sporting chiefs he would be leaving in any case, but it was “now or never” for United. He’s made a big deal about leaving the club where he’s made his name in “the right way”; allowing the club time to source a replacement and giving that replacement time to settle during the international break.
By all accounts he’s a man of morals and is in a very unusual and difficult position where he knows his bread will shortly be buttered on the other side.
Despite the attempts of a shameless reporter who should have had his microphone and accreditation removed the moment he lip-synced to ‘Call Me Maybe’ with the Crystal Palace cheerleaders over a decade ago to push him to flout those moral standards, Amorim played it perfectly, giving something for his “English fans” while showing courtesy to those who will be cheering for his team on Tuesday.
Well done, Ruben Amorim, and shame on you, Gary Cotterill. It’s that sort of Premier League-centric, Little Englander nonsense that gives the rest of us a bad name. How about you ask him a question in Portuguese instead?
