Football is such a huge global enterprise now that the role of translators has become increasingly important.

They do an excellent job conveying tactics of foreign coaches to players and helping deal with the media, but problems do arise. 

After Shakhtar Donetsk’s 4-1 defeat to AC Milan in the last week of Champions League matches, Romanian coach Mircea Lucescu spoke to the press in Italian having managed in Italy for many years.

A Russian translator enlightened the Ukrainian journalists following his own team but fiery Lucescu knew enough Russian to spot she had wrongly translated a sentence. His rebuke was only marginally less than the rollocking he hinted he had given his players.

After their recent Euro 2008 qualifying defeat to Italy in Genoa, Georgia boss Klaus Toppmoeller spoke in German, which was translated into Georgian by one man before a woman translated the Georgian into Italian and I spun the Italian into English in my head. Languages all have different nuances and “Chinese whispers” can often occur.

Spare a thought for the Ukrainian confronted by Alex Ferguson before Manchester United’s recent win at Dynamo Kiev.

“Is that English?” he asked a colleague.

Mark Meadows, Reuters sports correspondent in Milan and a native northern English speaker