In the 2008/2009 season Chelsea was the most multilingual football team in the Premiership, coming top of a league table charting the language skills of the UK Premier League teams.
Over 80 per cent of Chelsea's first team could count languages among their skills, with The Blues speaking 10 different second languages in total. Bar English, the most popular second language spoken among the team was Spanish, with Lampard, Carvalho, Anelka, Kalou and Deco all able to 'Hablar Espanol' in the changing room.
Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger knows the importance of languages having learnt German, English, Spanish, Italian and even Japanese to further his career.
He says: "The fact that I learnt languages allowed me to be where I wanted to be – in English football.
If you want to achieve your dreams, you can do it and languages can certainly help you get there."
The full language league table reads as follows:
| 1. Chelsea (28 language points) | 9. Everton (17 language points) |
| 2. Liverpool (27 language points) | 10. Newcastle (16 language points) |
| 2. Arsenal (27 language points) | 10. Tottenham Hotspur (16 language points) |
| 3. Fulham (26 language points) | 11. Aston Villa (13 language points) |
| 4. Manchester City (25 language points) | 12. Sunderland (12 language points) |
| 5. Portsmouth (21 language points) | 13. Hull City (10 language points) |
| 6. Blackburn (20 language points) | 14. West Ham (9 language points) |
| 7. Bolton (19 language points) | 14. Wigan Athletic (9 language points) |
| 8. Manchester United (18 language points) | 15. Middlesbrough (9 language points) |
| 8. West Bromwich Albion (18 language points) | 16. Stoke City (8 language points) |
According to the research, the linguistic 'man of the match' is John Carew (Aston Villa), who in addition to his native Norwegian speaks English, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French and Italian, followed by Sunderland's Rade Prica, who speaks Croatian, English, Norwegian, Danish and German.