Mikel Arteta listing “six or seven” languages and then switching between them on camera looks like a flex but it isn’t.
It is one of the quieter advantages that keeps showing up in the best managers.
He speaks Basque and Spanish from home. Catalan because school in Barcelona demanded it. French because Luis Fernández told a young Arteta at PSG: learn it fast or you don’t play. Portuguese from friendships. Italian from curiosity and culture, not from ever living there. English forged across Rangers, Everton and Arsenal. Sometimes he jokes that Scottish counts too.
That list is not decoration. A modern dressing room is a small United Nations. The manager who can speak to a player in the language they think in gets trust sooner, instructions cleaner, and emotion without a middleman. Arteta has said it himself: you can communicate without connecting. Connection needs the other person’s language. He starts in a signing’s mother tongue, then pushes English as respect for the club that hired them.
He also uses it as a weapon. French to one player on the touchline, Spanish to another, English to the next. Clarity for his own, noise for the opposition bench.
This is not unique to Arteta. It is a pattern.
Arsene Wenger built Arsenal’s first great international side while speaking French, English, German, Spanish, Italian and later Japanese. Language was how he sold a project to players who had never seen Highbury, and how he made a dressing room of French, Dutch, African and English voices feel like one idea.
Pep Guardiola carries Catalan, Spanish and highly functional English, and has always treated language as part of the method. The concepts are precise; the delivery has to be too. Players talk about how quickly the ideas land when the coach can meet them halfway.
Jose Mourinho is the purest case. His coaching career began as Bobby Robson’s interpreter. Portuguese, English, Spanish, Italian, French, Catalan. He understood early that tactics only exist once they have been transmitted. The Special One was, first, a translator who refused to let meaning get lost.
The through-line is simple. Elite management is teaching under pressure. Teaching is language: the right word for “now,” the tone that makes a demand feel like belief, the private sentence that settles a new signing in week one. Wenger, Guardiola, Mourinho and Arteta all treated that medium as part of the job, not an optional extra.
Plenty of coaches know the game. Fewer can look a player in the eye, in the language he dreams in, and make the idea feel personal rather than translated. That is the extra yard.
@enugudisco Am in Band A but from morning till night no light, eedc only give me light by midnight then take it back once it's 8am, this has been happening for almost a month now, kindly address because the amount of money I pay as Band A customer is too much for this bullshit
@OPay_NG I have been noticing that certain amount is always deducting from my money each time anyone pays me, if I check my transaction history the fraction removed is not always their, kindly tell me what the deduction is for, and why it's not on transaction history.
@OPay_NG I have been noticing that a certain percentage of money is always deducted from my money each time anyone pays me, if I check my transaction history the fraction removed is not always their, kindly tell me what the deduction is for and why it's not on the history.
Let me tell you all something quickly:
This bird here is a crow.
This man who killed it may not know this but this bird has superb facial recognition abilities, collective memory as a group and incredible social learning as a community.
They are known to keep grudges for years and for decades. If you kill/attack a crow, and another crow sees you, that crow will tell the rest and they will make it a community project to attack you, harass you, mob you and make your life hell.
During the day they will dive-bomb you. During the night they will make noises on your roof to give you nightmares.
There is nothing spiritual about them. They are just animals who have a good memory, who stand up for each other and who know how to keep a grudge against anybody who attacks one of their own. I wish Nigerians can learn from crows in how to deal with the lunatic politicians who ruin our lives. But that’s another day’s talk.
Anyway, incase you don’t know it yet:
You just messed with the wrong animal.
You will eventually have to relocate from that house. Go and write this down.
Mmesoma is trending because in 2023 one of the best students in Anambra State went viral for scoring 362/400, until JAMB declared it a fake result and banned her for 3 years.
Now, Nigerians are suspecting JAMB manipulated the
Akpabio built Stadium.
Peter Obi built modern Onitsha.
Akpabio sent people to Rome and Mecca.
Peter Obi reconstructed and equipped schools.
Akpabio built government office.
Peter Obi built civil service Secretariat.
Akpabio built hospital.
Peter Obi built first heart transplant, kidney dialysis and cancer specialist hospitals.
Akpabio built flyover.
Peter Obi built a teaching hospital.
Akpabio built another flyover.
Peter Obi distributed over 30,000 computers to schools.
Akpabio built another flyover.
Peter Obi provided boreholes in 177 communities within the state.
Akpabio sent another people to Rome.
Peter Obi established Microsoft academies.
Akpabio painted the stadium.
Peter Obi constructed Nkpor, obosi flyovers.
Akpabio sang Akwa Ibom ayaya.
Peter Obi built the three arms zone.
Akpabio sent another people to Mecca.
Peter Obi established the biggest indigenous vehicle manufacturing company in Nigeria.
I am just returning from the Custodial Center.
I was meant to re-interview just one person: remember the guy that got sentenced to death for defending himself against two armed robbers that attacked him?
Yes, today as scheduled for his further interview.
However, sequel to the said interview, the Officer in Charge, whilst on soft patrol, reached out to me and commended me for taking conscious effort to decongest the custodial center under his care. He was most impressed.
So, whilst at it, inmates without lawyers were referred to me.
I handful of them and some of those cases are worth sharing, after spending more than 4 hours [t]here.
1. Interviewed an inmate, let us called her EUO.
- She is 18 years old.
- Her father died when she was still a child (she is told).
- She hawks "agidi" and lives with her grandmother.
- Accused of armed robbery.
- She was arrested sometime in August 2024 alongside three men between ages 45 - 49 - all accused of armed robbery.
- When the police arrested, they tortured her to the point that she confessed to be an armed robber and wielding a gun.
-But at the Custodial center and during interview, she opened up that she never did any of those things: that it because:
1. the hung her upside down;
2. used lighter to burn her vagina;
3. tortured her until she could no longer endure the torture she received.
- One of the suspects arrested with her, who flatly denied being an armed robber, subsequently died at the police correctional center, owing to the torture meted on him at the Police Station.
- She was asked to produce 150k for her bail at the police station. But since she could produce the said 150k, she subsequently remanded.
- It is her case that she was prevented by the police from reaching her grandmother at all material time.
Her family is not aware of her whereabouts as I make this tweet.
I will be representing her pro bono.
CASE TWO: Let us called this inmate PNE.
They are peasants.
- They farm for people and used the proceeds to feed their children.
- The both have five and four children respectively.
- A concerned neighbour volunteered to be taking care of one of her children by providing food, and occasionally accommodating the child to sleep at her place infrequently. The child was 3 years old at the time. This is so, because, most times, the child is made to stay under the sun whilst the mother works on farm and had escaped snake bite twice.
- A relative of hers who got envious of the favours she was receiving from that neighbour reported her to the police on allegation of child trafficking.
She and her sister were arrested, and detained for 2 months and three weeks.
The lady that was occasionally assisting to take care of the said child was arrested and made to pay 9 million on allegation of child trafficking.
While they were at it, the police demanded that they (the inmates) pay the sum of 2 million naira to free themselves. Well, they could not produce such money, hence they were constantly tortured and eventually remanded at the correctional center.
They have so been at the custodial center all these while without legal representation.
We shall do all within our capacity to represent them and ensure that they get a deserving justice.
PS: These two women do not even know where their children are as I type. Because, upon their arrest, the police did not afford them the opportunity to inform their people that are being arrested. As we speak nobody knows of their whereabouts.
@access_more@access_more@myaccessbank a customer sent 40,000 to me, he was debited but the money has not been credited to my access account, its been two days now