The Language of Football

by Pablo Oliveira (Chile)

Making a local connection Vietnam

I had been living in Hải Phòng for three weeks, but I could count on the fingers of one hand the local friends I had made. Nearly all the people I knew were expatriates. Most of them were English teachers, whose life journeys had somehow led them to that random Vietnamese city; and that includes me. I was in the middle of a lesson planning, just past lunchtime, when a skinny little girl stormed into the room shattering my hard-to-achieve concentration level. "Hi, tchitcha! Mydaddinvitchu" she yelled in her 10-year-old kid's squeaky voice while fighting to catch her breath. She was the youngest and naughtiest (and smartest) of the neighbor’s daughters. Back then I was living in a four-story building that served as a school and housing for the foreign teachers. The place was located on a fairly isolated and peaceful dead-end alley, far from the well-known chaos of the hectic Asian avenues with their countless motorbikes going up and down like an army of ants. In front of the building, there was a small patio with a few plants that didn't seem to receive any care where kids used to play. Around us were four other houses where ordinary Vietnamese families resided. The house next door was home to Mr. Son, his wife, and their 2 daughters. I'd had short interactions with them before, but their English skills were virtually non-existent, and my Vietnamese was as good as their English, so we had never been able to really develop a conversation. As I entered the house I saw this shirtless elderly Vietnamese man, with a contagious grin on his face, sitting on a mat in the middle of a large and almost empty room. Besides the tiny old TV in front of him, a seemingly unfinished wooden sofa to his right, and a Buddhist shrine on the other side, there wasn't much else in that place that could be called furniture. By his feet, there was a bowl of peanuts, a white and flowery teapot, and a plastic bottle with homemade rice wine. That man was Mr. Son. I quickly noticed that football was playing on the TV; Liverpool and Chelsea, if I recall correctly. With a hand gesture, and without losing his joyful expression, he told me to sit down and offered me some wine. So, as someone who grew up in a country where people live and breathe football, I didn’t hesitate and joined him. At first, I didn’t know what to do or say. We didn’t speak a common language, so how could we have a conversation? But then, after minutes of awkward silence, he broke the ice. “Kotio!”, he said while pointing at the TV. I had no idea what that meant. Was that Vietnamese? Or perhaps he was attempting to speak English … Instead of trying to guess, I just nodded, smiled, and hoped it wasn’t a question. He repeated that same word twice over until I finally deciphered what he was saying: Coutinho. He was referring to Philippe Coutinho, a former Liverpool midfielder from Brazil. Mr. Son knew I was also from there, so I realized he was just trying to connect with me. “Yeah, Coutinho!” I replied, and we both smiled. “Lucas!”, “Firmino!”, “David Luiz!” Whenever another of my fellow compatriots showed up on the screen he would shout their names along with many Vietnamese words that I obviously didn’t comprehend. He then began listing other Brazilian players from different teams, some even retired, such as Neymar, Kaká, Ronaldo and Pelé. For each name a peculiar facial expression and intonation, indicating whether he liked them or not. A couple of hours and several glasses of wine later our conversation evolved to me pointing at random objects and asking him their names in Vietnamese, while also teaching him how to say them in English. We spent that entire afternoon like that: him speaking Vietnamese, me speaking English, neither of us truly understanding each other, but both having fun nevertheless. When we ran out of wine, it was time to head back home. I stood up, shook his hand, took the last sip from my glass, and left.