When he enquired why so many had turned out, one of the cameramen replied bluntly that it was because they were all foreigners. Gus Poyet, Chelsea’s captain on the day, recalls being surprised at the number of cameramen preying by the tunnel as he entered the pitch. This was the end of jumpers-for-goalposts football and the beginning of the beautiful game, accompanied by the vanity and transience which beauty infers. Vialli was left nonplussed by the awkward mix of petty isolationism and sensational fatalism espoused by the English press. In 1999, just four years after Jean-Marc Bosman successfully sued his club RFC Liège for restraint of trade at the European Court of Justice, Chelsea’s Gianluca Vialli became the first Premier League manager to field a starting eleven without any English players. These players began to pry open the floodgates, but it was the 1995 Bosman ruling that really blew them wide open. From Bosman To A Far-Flung Field In Four Short Years Worshipped by the home fans in their country of residence, they were often ostracised in their counties of origin. They were also the exceptions in a very English league, which was not without consequence. Twenty years ago, players like Eric Cantona (there can be no article about football and language without mentioning Cantona and his seagulls), Faustino Asprilla and David Ginola were considered exotic, flamboyant, temperamental geniuses integral to their clubs’ winning ways – Cantona was the first foreign player to captain an FA Cup winning team. Nowadays, plucking talent from the four corner flags of the world is paramount to achieving success at the highest level. When asked how many languages he speaks, Wenger smiles charismatically and replies, “Well, it depends on the day.” The team, located in the north London borough of Highbury, consists of three Frenchmen, two Germans, one Chilean, one Spaniard, one Czech, one Nigerian, one Egyptian and a Welshman. At the time of this writing in 2016, Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger’s starting eleven didn’t even contain a single Englishman. You might not think language and football are closely intertwined, but a cursory glance at any Premier League team sheet reveals an extraordinary breadth of different nationalities and native languages.