It’s difficult to argue that football is not a truly international sport. The conventions used around the world to name players, however, vary widely, and serve as a useful reminder that you can’t directly translate one word into its foreign equivalent. Different cultures express things in different ways - in fact they often express subtly different things full stop. In trying to explain the differences we come across a number of the social, cultural and economic factors that influence language.

When I was at primary school there was a persistent belief in the playground that Brazilian footballers only had one name. I understand where it came from - some of the greats have been known by one word: Pelé, Zico, Ronaldinho (Ronaldinho Gaúcho in Brazil).

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The remaining 8 top languages are all below 10%, with Arabic and Russian seeing the greatest growth since 2000. Perhaps predictably, as a percentage of language speakers who use the internet, Japan has the highest penetration wish a massive 75% of Japanese speakers accessing the web. German comes a close second with 68%, but the rest of the world has some way to go to catch up.

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