Tariq Panja reports for the NY Times (archived) about a man with a difficult job:
There is perhaps no one in the world who has paid closer attention to the diction and pronunciation of the former England soccer captain John Terry over the past month than Lassaad Tounakti, a 52-year-old Tunisian with a gift for languages, a passion for cologne and an accidental television career.
For Tounakti, understanding the minute details of the way Terry speaks is no casual affair. His ability to understand Terry’s every utterance has been a vital part of one of the World Cup’s toughest, and least forgiving, man-to-man assignments: As the main interpreter for beIN Sports, Tounakti has since the start of the tournament served as the voice of Terry and other retired stars hired by BeIN as it has transmitted the tournament night after night to Arabic-speaking viewers across the Middle East and North Africa. […]
Interpreting their words — quickly, precisely and live on the air — requires an extraordinary fluency in not only languages but soccer. For Tounakti, it means translating every word of Arabic into English in the ears of the former soccer stars before flicking a switch — literally and in his mind — and immediately rendering their thoughts, delivered in English, back into Arabic.
Every voice is different. The English diction of Kaká, a World Cup-winning Brazilian, is different from that of the Dutch soccer great Ruud Gullit, and the nuances of their pronunciations are different from those of the former Germany captain Lothar Matthäus.
Because of the sheer volume of coverage it is providing, beIN is employing four staff interpreters and supplementing them with freelancers for the World Cup. Most interpreters work in a rotation, but there are some accents, some ways of speaking, that require just a little bit more expert handling. Terry’s thick East London accent is one of those. […]
Tounakti’s career as the Arabic voice of beIN’s imported experts was in many ways accidental. As a delegation from Qatar prepared to fly to Zurich in December 2010 to make its final pitch to host the 2022 World Cup, beIN realized it did not have an interpreter who spoke both French and English. Tounakti, a university professor with a doctorate in linguistics and experience interpreting for the country’s emir, was enlisted for the trip […]
Last week, in the street separating two buildings in beIN’s complex in Doha, Peter Schmeichel, a former Denmark and Manchester United goalkeeper who is one of the company’s longtime analysts, arrived for an evening shift in the studio accompanied by Jermaine Jones, a German-born former U.S. midfielder.
In a chance meeting, Schmeichel and Tounakti exchanged a bit of banter before discussing the ways a show with live translation compares with a broadcast in which the guests speak the same language. “You prefer not to have it translated because there’s always going to be a little delay and you feel it kind of upsets the rhythm a little bit,” said Schmeichel, a regular presence on British television and beIN’s English-language channels. “But it works.” […]
The discussion moved to idiomatic expressions and the challenges they posed: One in particular, a phrase long used as shorthand to gauge a player’s true quality in England — “Yes, but can he do it on a cold, rainy night in Stoke?” — can cause mirth, and no small degree of confusion. “What do you exactly mean when you say this?” Tounakti said. Schmeichel laughed and suggested it might translate as “a hot Wednesday in Mecca.” He then departed for the studio. “I will do it with you next time, Peter. Inshallah,” Tounakti said as they parted. The rest of the night, he knew, would be all about John Terry. […]
Terry’s speech, Tounakti said, is full of glottal sounds, making it harder for some nonnative British speakers to immediately understand every word. To make his point, he started into a quick burst of what he believes Terry to sound like. “The other guys wouldn’t be able to interpret him,” Tounakti said, explaining that the difficulty is not because of the quality of Terry’s English but rather a combination of his speech patterns, language and pronunciation. It can make capturing the nuance of his insights and analysis difficult for interpreters with less experience. […]
BeIN’s broadcast began with the host speaking Arabic and Tounakti speaking English for his audience of one, Terry. The host spoke continuously for several minutes before turning to Terry and asking him a question. Tounakti interpreted it for Terry and then switched to Arabic as Terry explained how this year’s England squad appeared to be more united than the ones he played for a decade ago. The back-and-forth went on for several minutes, before the first commercial break offered a chance to check in with Terry. There was a small issue with the volume in Terry’s earpiece that was quickly resolved. And on they went.
There were 60 more minutes before the match began. By the end of the evening, after the 40-minute postgame show was over, Tounakti had been interpreting for more than two hours. He interpreted for Terry for most of it, but also for Matthäus at halftime and for various England and Senegal players and their coaches during so-called flash interviews after the game.
Thanks, Bonnie! (Longtime readers will know that I am a supporter of Argentina, so I will not be monitoring this blog for a few hours this afternoon as I try to will the albiceleste into defeating the dogged Croatians.)
I am a supporter of Argentina
Youbetcha. At this point I am my grandfather’s grandson … yr Ariannin am byth!
We haven’t used our tagine much since the finicky kids were born, and this very weekend my wife tried to get rid of it. I told her not just yet. I root for underdogs and if Morocco makes the final, I’ll be using the tagine again Saturday night to get in the spirit.
Recipe suggestions encouraged.
I can certainly think of worse reasons for supporting a national team than cuisine. What shall I do if the final tuns out to be Argentina-France? Do I go with my heart or my stomach?
The long-standing meme “Yes, but can he do it on a cold, rainy night in Stoke?” comes from Scottish pundit Andy Gray’s comment back in 2010 suggesting that Argentina’s Lionel Messi, who was dominating in Europe already with FC Barcelona, would struggle in England’s Premier League. Messi has proved himself repeatedly against English opposition since then, though he has never actually been tested in miserable weather at the Britannia Stadium on a Tuesday night.
As I said, it’s a meme; I can’t recall seeing it repeated without at least a hint of irony. As memes go it has had a long shelf life, and I can see it outlasting Messi’s playing career.
I think the meme of (not) going to an unglamorous place in bad weather was originally a barb aimed at fans* rather than players.
*So Called Fans, who only supported the team in the good times at sold out home matches against famous opponents, as opposed to Real Fans, who had been there through the lean years when they were slogging in half-empty dumps in the lower divisions.
a cold, rainy night in Stoke
“Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.”
I can certainly think of worse reasons for supporting a national team than cuisine. What shall I do if the final tuns out to be Argentina-France? Do I go with my heart or my stomach?
I myself have a fondness for France and the French, and have on more than one occasion have been heard to emit a cry of “Allez les bleus!” But it’s hard to root for a colonial master over their former colonial subjects, not to mention that they won last time around, so I’m rooting for Maroc tomorrow. And whoever wins that donnybrook will have to settle for second place come Sunday. Argentina hasn’t won it all since the Mano de Dios — it’s time!
Morocco’s team does seem to have overperformed (compared to ex ante expectations) more than anyone else. How much of that is a story of heroic virtue and pluck versus a story of soccer games at this high level being essentially random coin-flips as to whether the objectively “better” team will actually score more goals on the particular occasion is unclear to me. I find it interesting that the “Morocco” team is primarily a children-of-the-diaspora team. Of the 11 players who started the game against Portugal (chosen as a convenient sample of the larger group), only 4 were born in Morocco, with the others born variously in Belgium, Canada, France (2), the Netherlands (2), and Spain. The Canada-born fellow returned to Morocco at age 3 and learned to play there. The others appear to all be examples of some uncertain mix of ancestral loyalties, European failure to integrate immigrants socially/culturally, and/or individual opportunism. The linguistic angle is to wonder what language(s) they speak to each other on the field and on the sideline. French?*
NB that the Morocco-born-and-raised players having day jobs playing professional soccer in foreign countries where the pay is better than it is at home is a quite different phenomenon, assuming those fellows merely have work permits for the country where they are presently employed rather than passports.
*The team’s coach is not one of those imported-foreigner coaches common for non-Western nations with soccer aspirations but is himself an echt Moroccan. Except he was born and raised in France.
Not to mention Cheddira, who pulled off the unlikely feat of coming in as a sub in the 65th minute and still managing to be sent off for two cardable offences. He’s Italian born, raised and has played for 5 Italian clubs in his 24 years. Loyalty, nationalism and identity may not matter as much to many of these kids as you’d think. You’ll see countries try to cap some of these kids early, before they have time to decide to play for someone else. Here are some snippets from the wiki page of Tony Musah, the “American” midfielder.
>Musah was born in New York City while his Ghanaian mother was on vacation in the United States. His father is also Ghanaian. He moved to Italy after his birth, living in Castelfranco Veneto and later starting his career at Giorgione Calcio 2000. In 2012, at age nine, he moved to London and joined Arsenal’s Academy
>As a youth, Musah was eligible to play for the United States, Ghana, Italy, and England.
> [He] made his international debut with England’s under-15s in 2016 and subsequently represented England up to the under-18 level. He was also called up to the under-19 squad in October 2020.
>Musah accepted a call-up to the United States senior squad on November 2, 2020, to play in friendlies against Wales and Panama later that month
As I understand it, the age-bracket call-ups don’t count, but once you’ve played for the full national team, even in a friendly, you can’t switch.
I’ve played with two guys who’ve been capped, one for the US and one for Canada. But the game and the world were different then. (Among other things, as I watch McAlister play a pointless square pass from the top of the penalty box, there were guys who could hit shots from 25 yards in those days. Grrr.) In particular, I point to the idea that Musah “started his career” before he was 9 years old. That seems sadly accurate. The sister of one of my daughter’s teammates gets on a plane every 2nd week to play in other cities. She’s 14 now but started with this club two years ago.
I’d guess that 99% of people capped in the 80s had spent most of their lives in the country they played for. I believe the Premier League, or rather the Football League, had a limit on the number of non-British players a club could have on the field back then.
3-0! Bring on the final, baby!
And what if the way to your heart is through your stomach?
All this eligibility @#$**# is going to go away eventually, I predict. Nobody expects everyone who plays for the (rolls random numbers …) Chicago Cubs to be born and raised in Chicago, nor should they. Hopefully it will become a free-agency system rather than one of national horse trades.
That let-the-best-set-of-mercenaries-win approach works fine when cities (or clubs, since many large European cities have more than one) are the relevant unit of competition: that’s, in soccer, the UEFA Champions League, whose most recent tournament featured (in the round of 16) four “English” teams, three “Spanish” ones, two “French” ones, two “Italian” ones, two “Portuguese” ones, one Dutch one, one “German” one, and one “Austrian” one, each I assume fielding many non-citizen players. Not sure if that model still works if nation-states are the theoretical unit of competition.
Why Dutch team didn’t deserve the scare quotes? Anyway, in the context of the Champions League all those country labels are meaningful. They show in what national leagues the teams play. And an attempt to remove them from national championships was a huge flop.
I’ve got a soft spot for Croatia for no reason at all – because I took a liking to their distinctive strip the first time they played as a country, I think.
But my metaphorical money has been on France from the beginning, as far as pure prediction goes – and I’ve never quite forgiven Morocco for a certain match in 1998…
@D.O.: a pure editing glitch. The “Dutch” club was Ajax, whose as-currently-shown-on-wikipedia roster (possibly changed since that tournament) has 13 out of 24 players of Dutch nationality for FIFA purposes. That’s certainly more than chance! The remaining 11 are of 9 different (FIFA) nationalities, with only Argentina and Mexico having two representatives each and the rest being singletons.
France has played consistently well throughout the whole tournament.
Ordinarily I’d go for the underdog. But Morocco fans have shown an unsportsmanlike side by whistling and booing every time the opposing team touches the ball.
Morocco has certainly punched above its weight in this World Cup. I wonder how much of this is due to ‘home ground’ advantage?
The choose-for-life rule is meant to prevent “national horse trades”, and i does a fairly good job at it. Players simply can’t move for any amount of money after they made their adult choice. The only exception I’m aware of is if national federations are split or become realigned (usually because their nations do).
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t horse-trading going on on a personal level with players who have yet to play an international match. Second-tier Brazilians and exceptional talents from fourth-tier nations carry passports from aspiring nations all over the world. Should this be avoided? I think so. Or at least I think it should be made more difficult. I wish nationality was defined by childhood federation membership.
But countries smaller than 1 million should be allowed to join forces. The new Trinidad and Tobago, Belize and Jamaica team could be a power.
That’s how it works in cricket — the West Indies includes players from across the Caribbean, and they have been a international powerhouse at times (I don’t follow cricket closely enough any more to know how good they are now).
@Ryan: As I understand it, the age-bracket call-ups don’t count, but once you’ve played for the full national team, even in a friendly, you can’t switch.
Appearances in friendly matches don’t count. Diego Costa famously played a couple of friendlies for Brazil before switching to Spain. Within the last couple of years, the rules have been further relaxed so that even appearances in up to three competitive matches before turning 21 wouldn’t count, provided that none of those were in World Cup finals or continental finals like the Euros or Copa America.
An interesting tidbit from the NYT story “Joy and Anxiety Collide as Moroccans Look to World Cup Match With France“:
Notably, The City has three: Beşiktaş, Fenerbahçe, Galatasaray.
I’m pretty sure many of the Moroccan national team players, especially those from the diaspora, struggle with Arabic and will be more comfortable with Amazigh. And those who do speak Arabic will speak Darija or Moroccan Arabic, which is impenetrable to most of the Arab world, so many still need translators. Netherlands-born Hakim Ziyech is a Riffian speaker I think. There was a clip where he listened to a long question in Arabic before responding, “English please.”
There are reports that players are communicating mostly in English due to the diverse language backgrounds.
The Republic of Ireland began using diaspora players in the 1960s when FIFA introduced the “granny rule”, which was meant to cut down on oriundi from South America being poached by Italy and Spain but somehow made it easier for British-born players with Irish passports to qualify for the FAI team. The most notorious incident was in 1973, when Terry Mancini was lining up for his first cap and whispered a complaint about how long the Polish national anthem was dragging on, only to be told “that’s our anthem”. Plastic Paddies peaked under Jack Charlton (1986-96) but a few are still there. Jack Grealish and Declan Rice, who played for England at this World Cup, had played friendlies for Ireland when they were young and foolish.
My nightmare scenario for the final has now come to pass.
Many World cups ago (everyone can figure out how many, but true fans would just know) I watched a cup final Germany-Italy in a large company of strangers, and was asked for whom I was rooting. I don’t think there was a real preference, but I said “Germany”. One of the strangers asked “Why are you rooting for fascists?”, but another stranger rejoined “The others are fascists too”.
Italy = primo fascists ; Germany = über-fascists
Not sure if that model still works if nation-states are the theoretical unit of competition.
Well, to compare the sublime with the ridiculous[*], consider the Miss World competition. The competitors represent nation-states, but the requirement is merely that of being a citizen of the country you represent. The age range for eligibility is 17–27, which means that it is in principle possible to compete for eleven different countries during your career as a would-be Miss World.
(The other requirements are that one must be female, unmarried, and nulliparous (Ireland further requires that its candidate never have gone through a marriage ceremony that is not legally binding), and that one has no criminal record or is otherwise of bad repute. Transwomen are eligible if the country they represent makes them so. In many countries, including the U.S., the candidate is chosen by a modeling agency rather than a national competition.)
[*] As a male American born and bred and of a certain age, I absolutely decline to state which I think is which.
@D.O.: So this year one may choose between Vichyistes & Peronistas … (The Ustashites having been relegated to the 3d-place game …)
I guess it will do, in a pinch. But neither Perón nor Pétain bothered much anyone outside their borders. I am sure my watching party would approve of whomever I might would have been (I am completely lost in the correct choice of “tense” for this hypothetical) supporting in this final.
whomever I might would have been (I am completely lost in the correct choice of “tense” for this hypothetical) supporting in this final.
whomever I might have been supporting in this final.
“Terry explained how this year’s England squad appeared to be more united than the ones he played for a decade ago.” … largely due to Terry’s own malign influence. His character is every bit as bad as his speech.
2-0 ARG at the half — one goal by Messi, one by Di Maria, exactly how I would have wished it to go. France looking shapeless. Back in an hour or so…
¡Argentina, Sí!
Congratulations!
Diolch yn fawr, as they say in Argentina.
Thanks! That game nearly killed me — my long-suffering wife threatened to hide out in the bedroom after France tied it up, but fortunately she stuck around to share the agony and ultimate triumph. What a game!!
Congratulations! That was a fantastic final!
They’re calling it the best ever, and who am I to disagree?
Lots of big dots and one little dot, moving around within a rectangle. I’ll never get team sports. But I’m glad for those who have had a good time.
Das Runde muss in das Eckige – “the round thing has to go into the thing with the corners”.
Messi is leaving me with a lot of language-related questions. Why do the Argentines find his qué miras, bobo that funny? And why did Messi say Vamos Argentina, la concha de su madre in the full stadium after the final? I mean, I understand the literal translation but how did it evolve to a phrase to cheer on a football team?
Argentines love sweariness, especially in their sporting heroes — it’s a pibe thing. Fuck yeah! (as we norteamericanos say).
“Whatcha lookin’ at, Bubba”…?
qué miras, bobo is a 16C Benedectine thing, sez here:
# La frase que Leo Messi popularizó en pleno Mundial de Catar luce desde el siglo XVI en el monasterio de Samos. Un medallón de piedra muestra esa inscripción con letras rojas ordenadas de forma jeroglífica en el templo situado en la comarca de Sarria, al sur de la provincia de Lugo.
…
En el monasterio habitado más antiguo de España, ocupado por monjes benedictinos, se encuentra la frase con la que Pedro Rodrigues [vease al enlace, ed.] quiso alertar a los visitantes para que disfrutasen de la visita sin distraerse con nimiedades. En el Mundial de Catar 2022, antes de coronarse al fin campeón, Messi empleó los mismos términos para silenciar al neerlandés Wout Weghorst tras un intensísimo partido que solo se resolvió en favor de Argentina en la tanda de penaltis. #
Word of my day: nimiedad
L’Équipe:
Et ce sont les français qui disent ça!
Of course. Even in defeat, France is glorious.
(Just as well, really.)
Judging from street names in Paris, the French attitude to history is “history is good”, plain and simple.
(…except for Vichy.)
(…except for Vichy.)
And Alesia.
Alesia amnesia.
qué miras, bobo
“Whatcha lookin’ at, Bubba”…?
More like, “Whatcha lookin’ at, dummy.”
A “bobo” is someone who is dumb or slow. It also kind of implies that the person tends to stare which is why it’s the kind of word that parents use to scold children who watch too much television: “¡No seas bobo en frente de la televisión!”
Men also tend to be “bobos” in front of a pretty woman.
P.S. this message was from Pancho, not “Panchi”. Fat fingers + iPhone = Frequent misspellings.
That was then. Alesia has now joined the “history is good” program, complete with a street (and métro station) in Paris.
qué miras, bobo
Doesn’t Messi use his native Rioplatense voseo forms (along with debuccalization/loss of final s)?
Just a few days later, still trying to slow down my heart beat:
@bertil and @Xerib, and others — One of the things that surprised me when I first heard “qué mirá bobo” was what appeared to be a complete elision of the final “s” “in mirás” — last time I was in Buenos Aires, many decades ago, the final “s”, even (particularly?) in front of a consonant, would leave a clearly distinguishable aspirated sound, if not actually a sibilant. I hear nothing, am I the only one? Is Messi’s pronunciation a new RioPlatense one, or is it influenced by Catalá? I’d love to know the answer. It can be repeated ad infinitum at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqZM63MjhtU
Also, he doesn’t say “andá pa’llá”, he says “andá payá” with a very strong “y”, with an almost dental sound.
As to “concha de tu madre” (that is, “conchetumadre”), I’m surprised no one has remarked that this is exactly the same insult as Hebrew “כוס אמאך”, obviously a calque from Arabic, just as the Spanish one is.
Insults transcend cultures 🙂
I’m still waiting for him to say “la rrrremil puta que te parió”, which was so common in my day (’60s) – has it fallen into desuetude?
Preconsonantal /s/ in Rioplatense can be realised as [s], [h] or ∅ depending on a bunch of factors. The null realisation is stigmatised in formal speech, but perfectly commonplace.
Rioplatense, like most Spanish dialects, neutralised the /ʎ/ vs /ʝ/ distinction centuries ago. The result of the merger is typically pronounced [ʒ~ʃ], a phenomenon often called rehilamiento.
I just have to record my deep pleasure that Argentina won the Copa América final last night, its third major championship in a row (Copa 2021, World Cup 2022, now another Copa). 🇦🇷 ! Don’t mind me, just resume your regularly scheduled non-sports discussions.
Rioplatense, like most Spanish dialects, neutralised the /ʎ/ vs /ʝ/ distinction centuries ago. The result of the merger is typically pronounced [ʒ~ʃ], a phenomenon often called rehilamiento.
I recently saw the strange but wonderful Argentine movie Trenque Lauquen (directed by Laura Citarella) and was gobsmacked to hear everyone but the old farts pronounce ll/y exclusively as [ʃ]. I knew intellectually that that was a thing, but I wasn’t prepared to experience it. I am, of course, an old fart myself.
Just watched Cape Verde hold mighty Spain (favored to win it all) to a draw — most exciting 0-0 game I can remember.
I wondered which thread would become the official World Cup thread. I was prepared to hijack the IRAQI ARABIC thread tomorrow night.
Some of the excitement in the World Cup group stage is that it’s too short to even out the odd mishap, so even the favorites need luck. Now Spain are up against the wall in their remaining games, and Cape Verde has a fighting chance to reach the knockout stage. (It’s also a reminder that all the smaller nations came to the World Cup through tough campaigns and are — quite literally — qualified to play at this level.)
Yes indeed, and it’s always a thrill to see an underdog bite an overdog!
(To those who don’t want to hear about sports: just ignore this thread. I’ve got to have somewhere to share my enthusiasm and/or dismay.)
I don’t understand the “qualified to play at this level” claim. What does it mean that’s not tautological? If the rules used for selecting a 48-team tournament field mean that some teams that are not even ranked in the world’s top 60 or top 80 teams are going to play teams ranked in the world’s top 10, well, those are the rules, and teams entitled by the rules to play are indeed entitled by the rules to play. (Per our prior discussion of World Cup teams with interesting creoles, neither Curacao nor Haiti did as well as the Caboverdeans.)
But I do have a language question: consider the actually-existing headline “Cabo Verde pulls off historic World Cup upset.” Is a non-victory that still dramatically exceeded ex ante expectations within the semantic scope of “upset” or must a true upset be an actual win, in which case this headline would need to be understood as parallel to what is I guess technically hyperbole in statements like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Beats_Yale_29%E2%80%9329?
I don’t understand the “qualified to play at this level” claim. What does it mean that’s not tautological?
It means some teams or players are out of their depth and have no business playing with the big boys (or girls). Surely you are familiar with this phenomenon.
Is a non-victory that still dramatically exceeded ex ante expectations within the semantic scope of “upset”
Yes, as can be seen here.
Is there a kind of expectation that is not an “ex ante” expectation ?
Is there an ex post facto expectation in law, i.e., the defendant or plaintiff coulda shoulda woulda been expected to expect what happened to damage the plaintiff or defendant to happen, based on some principle of general reasoning, and then coulda shoulda woulda been able to prevent the damage?
My phrasing might have been redundancy for emphasis, but of course expectations are constantly being revised at least in fluid situations where people are paying attention. The odds that Spain would fail to beat Cape Verde are said to have been <10% before the game began, but I assume they began to move up materially as the clock kept ticking away without Spain managing to score. So I could implausibly claim (nunc pro tunc) to have meant pre-kickoff expectations.
This thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upset_(competition) claims that an unexpected tie/draw can be an "upset" but cites nothing for that and gives no examples. I remain skeptical, while making due allowance for hyperbole. (Does the semantic scope of every word implicitly include the scope of plausible hyperbolic uses?)
Cape Verde having fairly high per-capita soccer achievement for a small country seemed to initially make sense as a potential cultural legacy of empire, what with two Lusophone countries (Brazil and the imperial metropole) having top-ten teams. But after CV it looks like a long way down for Lusophones: #88 Angola, #103 Mozambique, #132 Guinea-Bissau, #193 Macau, #195 Sao T & P, & #201 East Timor, which is barely ahead of the world’s last-place “official” team (#211 San Marino) and presumably would be an underdog against your stronger unrecognized “national” teams like Northern Cyprus. So maybe there’s not any Lusophonic magic factor after all?
This thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upset_(competition) claims that an unexpected tie/draw can be an “upset” but cites nothing for that and gives no examples. I remain skeptical, while making due allowance for hyperbole.
I’m not sure why you’re privileging your ex ante guesses over the usage of actual fans and sportswriters. If a headline calls it an upset (as did the broadcasters I was watching) and Wikipedia agrees and I, a fan, find nothing odd about it, is that not sufficient?
I wondered which thread would become the official World Cup thread.
I chose this one because it records the triumph of Argentina and I am hoping the magic will rub off on this year’s team.
If a draw can be an upset, can a surprisingly narrow defeat be one? Such doubts do not afflict the synonym “giant killing”.
I wouldn’t think so, because a defeat is a defeat, however embarrassing. The tie deprived Spain of a much-needed point.
I found it a surprising usage and would thus be interested in evidence of its actual use prior to yesterday. Doing some research of my own, one can indeed find scattered instances of “upset tie” in the context of football, back when ties in football were still a thing, e.g. the 1985 N.Y. Times story about Rutgers’ “surprising and exciting 28-28 tie … with highly favored Florida” celebrates the unknown backup quarterback who came off the bench in the fourth quarter and “took his team on two long touchdown drives of 65 and 86 yards to gain the upset tie and snap Florida’s 10-game winning streak.”
It has been so long since overtime became routine in college football (which lagged pro football in that regard) that I guess I cannot accurately tell you whether that use of “upset” would have struck me as peculiar/unexpected at the time.
Although maybe “upset tie” if considered a fixed phrase is modest evidence that an upset is a win unless explicitly otherwise specified?
An Egyptian soccer player came up in pub quiz tonight while, we were informed, Egypt was playing against Belgium.
“Predictions are very difficult, especially about the future.”
I once grew tired hearing about Tunisian professors who went to Qatar or KSA.
A friend of mine studied linguistics in Tunis in 10s. She liked some professors, she didn’t like some others and some others didn’t like her (or her headscarf). Wonderfully, it’s those professors who she liked who went to the peninsula. As result she hated the education she was [not] receiving.
This professor was itnerpreting for idiot emir in 2010, so Tunisian students liked him in 00s.
i’m not sure that the u.s. sports usage for “upset” really takes the possibility of a tie into account at all – simply because none of the major commercial sports allow them. so an upset is more or less definitionally a win, but that translates into “not having been beaten” when the usage encounters a tie.
France-Senegal is 0-0 at the half; France doesn’t seem very involved (and Mbappé is downright sloppy) — have they forgotten that Senegal beat them a few World Cups ago? Anyway, I come to report on this bit from the NYT live blog:
Nice to get some Hattic material from the games.
When France won the World Cup in 2018, they managed to beat Croatia in the final despite the Croats’ unsporting refusal to speak to each other in French. But I guess maybe the question should be whether when Belgium was against France in the semi-finals its team was capable of managing internal communications in Dutch to promote operational security?
Clearly all non-French teams should learn Wolof. (The French, as is well known, are constitutionally incapable of learning it.)
Norway should be safe then. They can pick up Wolof from the Senegalese in game 2 before meeting France in game 3.
Argh, now I cannot find the online version of this anecdote which I have probably linked to before – perhaps the relevant college classmate got rid of his antique blog when he transitioned to substack? In any event, it’s a story about the perils of assuming no one else on the subway/metro car (this was either in Paris or Brussels) can understand Wolof simply because they all have white skin. Perhaps it generalizes to soccer fields? Summary: two fellows of apparent Senegalese origin are chatting with each other when a very attractive young woman boards the train and they proceed to have a very explicit conversation about what they would like to do with her body, all of which is understood by a white passenger (college classmate of both me and the erstwhile blogger) who had spent a few years in Senegal with the Peace Corps. But he (the eavesdropper) tries to stay stonefaced and not let on that he understands. Eventually the woman gets off and at the stop after that another white fellow dressed like a Catholic priest who perhaps had also spent time in Senegal gets up to leave and on his way out says to the guys in reasonably fluent Wolof did you really mean that part about such-and-such, causing some consternation. Our classmate continued to remain impassive, although it was a challenge. I told him afterwards that he should have gone over to the guys and said to them in Wolof the equivalent of wow, can you believe that priest understood Wolof? (Classmate FWIW is also fluent in French but is not “French” but rather grew up in I think New Jersey with Walloon parents.)
Looks learnable.
Grammaire wolofe came out in 1826… and Wolof even has consistent final stress. Hm. I may have said too much.
He should have. What a missed opportunity.
The Wolof-on-the-subway story is still online, on a blog updated as recently as 2025, right where it was linked from here by JWB in 2009 among other occasions, and copy-pasted without linking in 2015.
The thing about such stories is that I find remarks like the one uttered a bit silly (or artificial) but I’m unable to come up with a better one.
Norway one goal up against Iraq at half time. I thank the half-time whistle for that. Iraq had deserved at least one goal more.
the colloquial mix of slang and Arabic words frequent in Wolof will be almost impossible for the French to decipher
Unlike the regular sociolinguistically unmarked inherited vocabulary, which is presumably instantly recognisable due to French’s North Atlantic origins.
Notable among Wolof loans into French is the racist epithet bougnoule (i.e. b-u ñuul “sg_class_1-linker black”).
If a draw can be an upset, can a surprisingly narrow defeat be one?
Scotland’s 2-1 loss to Brazil in 1998 certainly felt like one (or whatever the obverse of one is) at the time – to score, and not be overrun, was a very good result. (Sadly the next two matches were more disappointing!)
However I think ‘upset’ is more often used for knockout matches, which would potentially cover a draw which led to a rematch, but not an expected loss. (The three matches per team in the World Cup group stages makes them a good bit closer to knockout than any one of the 38 matches per team in an ordinary league – a loss to a team near the bottom of the league there might be a surprise or a disappointment, but is it an upset? I’d have to pay more attention to football headlines to be sure…)
@jen
That match was notable for me because the UK commentators stated at the end of the first half that Scotland was unlucky that the score was 2-0. Having watched the same match as these commentators, I felt rather that Brazil was unlucky that the score was not 4-0 at that point.
@jen: I think in a league game it would depend on the stakes – a favorite losing to or only getting a draw with a “cannon fodder” team at the beginning of the season would be just a disgrace, while such a defeat or draw near the end of the season when the favorite is tied with another favorite for the championship and needs every point would be an upset.
In my American experience, which may be out of date, only the result of the game determines whether it’s an “upset”, not the effect on the standings or the teams’ chances to keep their seasons going. (The exception is that I don’t think you’d use “upset” for an “exhibition” game that the teams aren’t particularly trying to win).
I was idly wondering whether it’s cromulent to use “upset” in the context of baseball — given that it’s not unusual for the strongest major-league team in a given season to lose 40% of its games, losing any particular game to a generally-weaker team is just not that surprising a game-specific outcome. And it turns out that there’s a book subtitled “The Biggest Upsets in World Series History” which seems to apply “upset” not to individual games but to the outcomes of a series as a whole. So, e.g., in the author’s opinion the Mets’ victory over the Orioles in the 1969 WS was an “upset,” but that doesn’t necessarily mean that any of the Mets’ four victories were upsets considered in isolation, because it wasn’t like there was a strong conventional-wisdom expectation that Baltimore would win the series in four straight games. (Over the last century-plus the team that lost the WS still managed to win at least one game approximately five times out of six.)
Jerry Friedman: I agree with Jerry Friedman about what defines an upset. I think the differences Hans is talking about are ones of pragmatics. That a game was an upset is just more relevant when something hangs in the balance. The Mets getting blown out at home by the Expos 9-1 on September 8, 1986 was an upset, but it was unlikely to be referred to as one very much—because it was a meaningless loss for the Mets, who were in first place by twenty-one games and because (as J.W. Brewer notes) even the best teams in baseball lose dozens of games every season, including losses to much weaker teams.
Just want to register my jubilation over Argentina’s 3-0 win over Algeria — the game was in some sense meaningless, since Argentina is going to advance no matter what (they actually lost their first match against Saudi Arabia four years ago, and went on to win it all), but to see Messi get his first ever hat trick in a World Cup and tie Klose for the most goals scored was a thrill.
@Brett, JF: as far as I can tell, in soccer there is a much bigger expectation that top teams win most of their games, especially against low-league-table teams, than in most American ball games, as you don’t have the mechanisms that are meant to even out the odds inside leagues, like the draft. Tactics like I read about recently like trying to lose games to allow a team to pick better players don’t make sense at all in the system according to which soccer leagues are run.
@Hans: within North American sports there’s also a mathematical pattern going on. Major-league baseball teams play by a considerable margin the largest number of different games/year (162), and that somehow makes the distribution of win-loss records cluster closer to the middle of the bell curve.* For basketball and ice hockey the number is almost exactly half of that (currently 82) and the highest-performing teams in a given year often have a percentage of wins completely outside the right tail of the baseball distribution. And football has the fewest (now up to 17 regular-season games per season), making even higher winning percentages for a team having a hot streak not uncommon. The last undefeated regular season in the NFL was apparently almost 20 years ago, but last year the best teams won 14 out of 17 and the year before someone won 15. FWIW in what is branded as our “Major League” Soccer, last year’s best regular-season performance was 20-8-6,** which might be not that impressive in certain other countries. Or maybe the MLS tries harder to promote “parity” like its North American competitors in other sports.
*Only thrice in the last 70 years has an MLB team won 70% or more of its games, and one of those two was in the 2020 season when COVID meant the total number of games was cut in half, predictably creating an opening for anomalous results.
**Or 20-6-8 per the conventions used in certain other parts of the soccer world.
In the big soccer leagues in Europe the difference in budgets and resources between the top teams and even middle-ranked teams in the same leaague are stupendous; depending on the country, the major European leagues have 2-3 teams that predictably become champion and when none of them makes it, it’s a sensation (in Germany it’s even more extreme – it’s a surprise when Munich doesn’t become champion, and in case they don’t, an even bigger surprise if the champion isn’t Dortmund). My impression is that there is more fluidity in the leagues with more big-money whales, like the Premier league.
@Hans: Which is more oligarchic, that scenario in which only the entrenched/privileged few ever win, or the North American approach where the oligarchs owning all the various teams collectively decide that they will collectively make more money if they agree among themselves on parity-promoting rules tending to encourage competition and create a wider variety of champions, thereby enticing more fans to spend more money on the sport?
Another upset tie: Congo 1 – Portugal 1! This is turning out to be quite a Mundial.
Ah, ambiguity! I thought for a moment (because I don’t pay that close attention …) that Congo-Brazzaville was one of the beneficiaries of the expansion of the field to 48, but alas no.
@JWB: I don’t want to pronounce on that. I can only say that, judging from the reaction of fans to the attempt of top European clubs to set up their own American style closed league, European fans seem to prefer a de-facto oligarchy which allows at least an occasional chance for an underdog to upset the apple cart to a formalized oligarchy that no outside team can enter.
More linguistic confusion – a ‘tie’ to me is a fixture (generally in newspaper language), while the thing when two people score the same number of goals (or other points) is a ‘draw’. Which of course can also be the occasion when they pull all the team names out of some kind of metaphorical hat.
I am pleased to see that I announced my liking for Croatia four years ago, so I can support them with impunity tonight. Although I’ve predicted a draw in the BBC’s prediction game, which was foolish…
Unchecked fact: It’s called a draw because in knockout tournaments with no means of resolution of equal scores, you go on to draw a winner.
Just want to register my jubilation over Argentina’s 3-0 win over Algeria
Though I wish no ill to Algeria, as the proud grandson of an Argentine, I too rejoice. Yr Ariannin am byth!
European fans simultaneously want less money in sports to give better chances to outsiders and more money in sports to give better chances for their own team. These are not contradictory.
Trond: The OED says ‘The semantic development of this sense is not entirely clear, but may have been via an unattested original sense ‘to withdraw from, abandon, give up (a contest)’.’
I was interested to see that some of the quotations were about battles – I had always thought that a ‘drawn battle’ was drawn out, lengthy, rather than inconclusive. You learn something every day…
[Playing the dork who kills the conversation:] Mundial or Mondial?
More linguistic confusion – a ‘tie’ to me is a fixture (generally in newspaper language), while the thing when two people score the same number of goals (or other points) is a ‘draw’.
Yes, and apologies for the confusion – in theory I know that, but in practice my Yank “tie” is so deeply ingrained it comes out automatically.
My wife asked me who I predicted to win in England-Croatia, and I said “Who the hell knows?”
Oh, I didn’t mean that you shouldn’t use your word – I misread it for a second, but no more. I was only mildly amused that both words had two relevant meanings.
Yes, I’m amused by that as well.
At the moment ENG-CRO is 1-1, but if that holds it won’t be any kind of an upset, just a garden-variety tie/draw.
This prompted me to look up where German Patt “stalemate” comes from. Well, from French, which has it from Italian, where things get murky or even assez fantaisiste.
stand pat in English?
For whatever reason the fixed phrase “win, lose or draw” is perfectly idiomatic in AmEng, while “win, lose or tie” is so rare the ngram viewer doesn’t want to graph it for me. Perhaps a survival from an earlier period?
Must be.
That’s an interesting one. No etymology given in Wiktionary; in turn it’s a bit too young to be the/a source of the German.
If you look elsewhere in wiktionary, that “pat” is said to be cognate with the German verb “platzen.” It’s the same “pat” as in “to have it down pat,” for example.
Conceivably “win, lose, or draw” originated in chess or checkers or some other game where “draw” is still the normal term in America, though somehow I associated “win, lose. or draw” with people who are more interested in sports with scores than in board games with victory conditions.
What is Jerry implying about these guys? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win,_Lose_or_Draw_(album)
No discussion of draw vs tie can fail to mention that in cricket, they are two different outcomes.
My fake etymology for draw is that, in the early years of the FA Cup, if a match ended equal then both sides entered the draw for the next round of matches.
While many of the England and Scotland teams have family ties to Ireland (Declan Rice even played for Ireland when he was young and foolish) the only homegrown Irishman at the World Cup is playing for Cape Verde. Pico Abú!
Nate Silver is claiming that the extra teams added to expand the field from 32 to 48 are mostly good enough to be there, but that this leads to various unbalanced quirks in tournament structure and they should just go ahead and expand the field to 64. Which is of interest here only because he has calculated to his own satisfaction which teams would have been added to this year’s field as #49 through #64 in “merit” or whatever you want to call it. Suriname might be the most interesting of those in purely linguistic terms (call McWhorter for comment!), although I guess Wales and Kosovo might also have some fans. And then there’s the UAE, whose national soccer team is quite heavily stocked with hard-working immigrants from diverse origins (i.e. mercenaries/ringers, as the haters would put it) who may not be very fluent in Gulf Arabic but do have a nice variety of L1’s, raising I guess the question of what the team’s working language is and whether their opponents can understand it.
@JWB: Living in the UAE, I would guess that the working language is a language with a quirky orthography originating on a peripheral European island.
This Dubai-born fellow is “eligible to represent France, United Arab Emirates, Senegal and Cameroon” in international soccer. Who cares about dual citizenship when you can have quadruple? I assume he speaks several languages at perhaps varying levels of fluency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junior_Ndiaye
Billong to Four Countries!