What is the Spanish for professional foul?

Offering yet more proof I’m the type of super-dedicated coach who never really takes time off, I get up early this morning to write an email to the parents of my squad.

Dear parents,

I know some of you have probably outsourced the rearing of your children to residential summer camps right now but for those of you who haven’t, there’s a great educational opportunity available for the boys. The Copa America is being shown live on the Spanish television channels every night and it would be great if the kids watched some of these games. They may learn some Spanish but they will definitely learn a lot about some of the more professional elements of the sport.

If you can sit down with your sons, tell them to watch how often a player plays the man and the ball right in front of the ref’s eyes, disguising the foul brilliantly. They should pay particular attention to the extra sneaky kicks and sly shirt drags employed after the ball has already gone down the field. These encounters also offer excellent instructive examples of how to turn every simple foul into a three-act play by writhing around on the ground. Some of this stuff we’ve worked on in practice and the boys will be excited to see the same stuff being done at a higher level by pro players.

Of course, you have to be careful watching these matches as one or two of the players will be doing stepovers, backheels and other fanciful moves that I would prefer our boys not to see or, worse still, to end up copying.

Yours in Sport,

Coach

PS. If you have daughters, they should watch Copa America too. Some of the players are doing way more interesting and creative things with Alice bands and pony-tails than we’ve seen so far at the Women’s World Cup in Germany.