Speaking in tongues: the Irishman teaching Liverpo

no gimpy anti-liverpol stuff lads , there are other threads for that.this fella is carving out a nice little niche.

They say the Irish speak the best English - and Liverpool FC seems to agree. Mary Hannigan talks to Rob Healy, whose Bray-based firm is charged with teaching the club's large number of 'foreign' imports how to speak English.

A group of British MPs recently issued yet another plea to English football clubs to reduce the number of foreign players they recruit. They pointed to the figures that show 60 per cent of the playing staff of the 20 Premier League clubs is now foreign - broken down, that's 331 players from 66 different countries, compared to the 11 foreigners who were playing in the Premier League when it began 16 years ago.

While these figures are a source of alarm for those worried about the long-term prospects of the English national team, they are music to the ears of Rob Healy. Indeed, when Liverpool, one of his company's clients, go shopping for new players his most fervent wish is that they don't buy British, instead opting to add to the 20 or so foreign players they already have in their first team squad.

It's not that Healy doesn't rate British footballing talent, it's just that the more non-English speakers Liverpool have on their books the more work for his company, Bray-based Crofton Training.

Three years ago Healy approached the club about giving one-to-one English lessons to its foreign players. "They brought us over for an interview and agreed to a trial week with Fernando Morientes, the Spanish player, and after a couple of days working with him he was happy - in fact he asked me to teach his wife English as well.

"So that's how it came about, now four of us work with 42 people at the club, ranging from first team and reserve players - and their wives and girlfriends - to members of the staff. It's very important to Liverpool that their players speak English, the last thing they want is for cliques to develop in the squad based on the languages the players speak. Even when Rafa Benitez [Liverpool's Spanish manager] shouts instructions from the sideline to Fernando Torres [ the team's Spanish striker] he'll do so in English - it might be easier for both of them to do it in Spanish, but their view is it's an English club, so they must use its language."

When Healy, now 35, graduated from UCD in 1994 with a degree in English and philosophy, he didn't, he admits, envisage a career that would include teaching Spanish, Brazilian and Slovakian footballers, to name but three of the nationalities he works with, how to conduct post-match interviews with Sky Sports.

But after a spell teaching English as a foreign language, a route in to employment taken by many a graduate, Healy had discovered his calling. Having moved in to the area of teaching "business English" the Dubliner was recruited as group language consultant by German company Steinbeis. Then four years ago he went out on his own, setting up Crofton Training.

"I've worked for 10 years now with people from every background and nationality, so I've learnt exactly what they need," he says.

Crofton Training run several different courses at their Bray base but their main areas of work, both here and abroad, are "business and general English" and "intercultural and business communication skills".

How is your English? "It is very bad, I am not very intelligent," says a laughing Alvaro Arbeloa, the Spanish defender signed by Liverpool for £2.5 million a year ago. "But I have a very good teacher, the classes are very funny. I am a lucky man, he is very clear," he says of his tutor, Healy.

Any problems? "Yes, the Scouser accent. Jamie Carragher and Steve Gerrard. They speak very fast. It's very hard to understand. Sometimes I have to say: 'repeat please'. But it's impossible. But I try to speak English to them, it is important that I learn. But Rob is great. And now he must give me £20 for saying that."

"And if I had a pound for every time I was asked 'are you teaching English to Jamie and Stevie?' I'd be a very, very rich man," says Healy, who has yet to add the Liverpudlians to his roster. For now he and his staff concentrate their time on teaching English to the club's imports, even if some of them had more than a few lessons before.

"Well, Xabi Alonso famously had his first brush with English when he was a Spanish student in Kells, Co Meath. Then there was Antonio Nunez (who has since left Liverpool for Celta Vigo). The first time I met him he said 'Ballybrack! Tesco car park!' I said 'what?' He had been a Spanish student in Dublin, and the Tesco car park was where he used to meet up with all his friends. And here he was, a few years later, a professional footballer with Liverpool."

Do the current crop of Liverpool "foreigners" now speak English with a Dublin accent? "Not really," says Healy, "although one of them said 'bus' the other day in the strongest of Dublin accents, so . . . maybe."

While Healy might spend some of his time teaching his students the essentials - such as "offside", "obviously", "gutted" and "gaffer" - it's as important to him that the players are armed with enough English to make everyday life less of a chore.

"Fernando (Morientes) has left Liverpool now, but I met up with him and his wife last year. The football side of things didn't work out too well for him at the club, but I taught both of them English. They told me they took a holiday in New York a few months ago and were able to more than get by with their English. That was a big thing for them, and for me too. It kind of opened up their world.

"Yes, you want to help these guys do their post-match interviews on Sky Sports, but more importantly you just want to help them communicate, in every aspect of their lives. Fernando (Torres), for example, is a very smart guy, he wants to be able to do English interviews and to be able to speak to the supporters, it really matters to him. My job is to make that possible, and he's getting there, fast. When I see these players finally do their interviews, comfortably, like the goalkeeper Pepe Reina, it's incredibly satisfying. They want to communicate, my job is simply to help them do that."

Nunez the knacker from the bracker in his shiny tracker! Smart man that Rob healy fair play to him