Cambridge University boffins today revealed the 100 words you need to be a football manager after Fabio Capello boasted his broken English is no bar to success.
The Italian recently brushed aside concerns about his language skills by claiming he only needs a vocabulary of 100 words to speak to the average England international.
Academics at Cambridge University have now used a super computer to trawl through one billion words in the English language and find the most useful football phrases.
The list of words they discovered include vital nouns such as ‘ball’, ‘goalpost’ and ‘cup’ and verbs including ‘kick’, ‘dribble’ and ‘dive’.
Essential words that Capello needs to deliver inspiring team talks are ‘passion’, ‘spirit’ and ‘pride’.
But boffins also listed the inevitable words required for any England manager; ‘defeat’, ‘disappointment’, ‘humiliation’ and or course, the ‘sack’.
The research was carried out by boffins at Cambridge University Press.
Capello, 64, shocked football fans in March by claiming his limited command of English does not hinder his management of the national team.
He said: ”If I need to speak about the economy or other things, I can’t speak.
”But when you speak about tactics, you don’t use a lot of words. I don’t have to speak about a lot of different things. Maximum 100 words.”
After hearing his boast Cambridge academics set out to discover which 100 words are most important to football managers.
They have spent several weeks searching The Cambridge Dictionaries Online (CDO), a vast database of English texts, called the Cambridge International Corpus
The dictionaries contain more than one billion English words used regularly in newspapers, books, emails and conversations.
Experts tracked down around 8.5 million football-related words before refining them to the 100 most commonly used football nouns, verbs and adjectives.
Academics have not included the basic functioning words such as the, to, be, of and in.
The list of 100 words:
1 – ball
2 – cup
3 – player
4 – Game
5 – Match
6 – Win
7 – Lose
8 – Play
9 – Team
10 – Goalkeeper
11 – Defender
12 – Fullback
13 – Midfielder
14 – Winger
15 – Striker
16 – Forward
17 – Defence
18 – Midfield
19 – Attack
20 – Pitch
21 – Goal
22 – Goalposts
23 – Crossbar
24 – Woodwork
25 – Box
26 – Touchlines
27 – Left
28 – Right
29 – Kick
30 – Pass
31 – Tackle
32 – Cross
33 – Dribble
34 – Shoot
35 – Strike
36 – Score
37 – Equalise
38 – Foul
39 – Defend
40 – Attack
41 – Header
42 – Touch
43 – Mark
44 – Dive
45 – Referee
46 – Linesman
47 – Assistant
48 – Offside
49 – Handball
50 – Free-kick
51 – Penalty
52 – Corner
53 – Goal-kick
54 – Caution
55 – Suspension
56 – Yellow
57 – Red
58 – Cards
59 – International
60 – Tournaments
61 – Stages
62 – Competition
63 – Friendlies
64 – Qualifiers
65 – Group
66 – Quarter-finals
67 – Semi-finals
68 – Progress
69 – Final
70 – Shootout
71 – Tactics
72 – Training
73 – Formation
74 – Possession
75 – Pressure
76 – Defensive
77 – Attacking
78 – Patience
79 – Fitness
80 – First-half
81 – Second-half
82 – Half-time
83 – Injury-time
84 – Extra-time
85 – Physical
86 – Technical
87 – Clever
88 – Pace
89 – Skill
90 – Talented
91 – Fans
92 – Supporters
93 – Passion
94 – Spirit
95 – Pride
96 – Excitement
97 – Defeat
98 – Disappointment
99 – Humiliation
100 – Sack
