RP in football players?

Is ther actually any top English player who talks Received Pronuntiation?

I can't find any , as i believe that Beckahm talks stuary, Rooney and Gerrard talk Scouse, and Terry and Lampard talk Cockney

Beckham's English has estuarine aspects, but sounds east London to me, which is slightly different. I don't think I'd call Terry and Lampard Cockney - east London too.

I can't think of an RP player. Walcott uses a lot of RP in his interviews, but will say V or F for Th, and W for L in words like milk. Going back a few years, Graeme le Saux has RP influences, but doesn't speak RP.

The terms "RP English English accent" and "English Premier League football players" are two totally opposing concepts, about as alien to each other as it is possible to get.

It would be virtually impossible to find an English professional footballer who speaks EERP - it just doesn't happen that way, as the vast majority of these footballers are recruited from the less eduated, more socially disadvantaged and less economically active sections of English society. I think it;s true to say that the overwhelming numbers of them come straight off the so called "sink estates" of England - ie housing estates run by local authorities and rented out to the residents. Crime and poverty and social deprivation are almost a way of life on many of these estates.

With little in the way of formal education many of the lads growing up on these estates have two options to consider, now that full time permanent heavy industrial manufacturing manual jobs are difficult to find these days in the UK...they can either join the Army (as many do) or they can follow some kind of dream (often of the pip variety) and pursue a career in professional football. The prime incentive of course is the reality of the gigantic sums of money they can earn shoud they ever secure this dream and become a first class professional footballer, earning many thousands of £s a week...incredible sums of money just for kicking a leather bagful of air around a football pitch in front of many thousands of cheering (or jeering) fans.

Academically they have very little, if anything at all, in the way of operational brain cells and as often happens in these circumstances they have the lack of intellect and reasoning and open mindedness to go with it all, but as long as they continue to scoop up all that lovely dosh each week they couldn't give a toss about all that kind of stuff.....that's just for poofs and toffs....and furthermore, they think about all those gorgeous WAGS* and hookers and groupies clamouring round them in the bars and clubs, caring little about the real reason all those women are flocking round them like flies rond a honeypot....footballers tend to think down below rather than up above.

A very prominent exception to this "rule" is indeed Graeme le Saux - as mentioned in a previous post....his background and upbringing is vastly different from those of his former teammates and footballers generally.

He was born in Jersey, one of the Channel Islands, as his surname suggests.....islands which are actually part of the British Crown territories but which are geographically very much closer to France than to mainland England. He was however eduated in a public school in Romford, Essex (see the relative thread on UK public schools) - and his well qualified educationally. That sets him apart immediately. He does not in anyway have a rough, sink estate accent - which you can hear in the link below. He is highly articulate (again, very, very non-mainstream in footballer terms - just think Beckham here!), he is interested in a wide range of academic topics and is able to conduct very intelligent conversations, and he is well known for reading The Guardian newspaper, often regarded as the reading refuge of the highly educated and edicated elite in the UK.

Furthermore, Graeme le Saux is an avowed supporter of the Conservative Party (mostly referred to by the less educationally endowed footballers as "the f*****g Tories).

So in the eyes of many other footballers, and more significantly the fans yelling and bellowing from the terraces of London's Stamford Bridge (the home of Chelsea Football Club) and elsewhere when Chelsea played "away" - Graeme le Saux just had to be gay. The fact that he was married (to a woman) made no difference.....Le Saux talks "posh", he reads a "posh" newspaper, he talks about "posh" subjects, his hands are well kept and his fingernalls are clean and well clipped - so he just HAS to be gay....so the poor bloke has had to endure mindless, meaningless, puerile homophobic chanting from the fans on the terraces, and even worse - similar treatment, including obscene on-pitch gestures, from some of the morons making up his team-mates within Chelsea Football Club.

Anyway, Graeme le Saux does not really have what you would call a "posh" English English RP acent in my opinion - more an ordinary basic standard non definable well enunciated English English accent which in the ears of most Brits would be from the Southern part of England, which it is in effect. In fact, whenever I have heard any Channel Islanders** speaking they too seem to have a similar way of speaking our mutual language.

Anyway, judge for yourself...you'll have to wait for the presenter to finish her introductory spiel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMToOK0NVUM

*WAGS - wives and girlfriends

** Channel Islands - Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark, plus a group of smaller uninhabited islets.

That's a remarkably silly post, Damian.

It makes as much sense to jeer at footballers for their lack of academic qualifications as it would make for footballers to jeer at academics for their lack of footballing skills.

I would be very surprised, by the way, if you had any real data on the educational background, social origins, or intellectual prowess of professional footballers in this country.

I don't think for a single nano second that thousands of academics would ever pack into the stands of a professional football ground and jeer at the twenty two players as they ran onto the pitch, mocking and deiriding them for their lack of intellectual prowess and educational qualifications, and not even for the drunken boorish, loutish, ignorant manner in which too many of them conduct themselves away from the pitch, and not infrequenty finding themselves in trouble with the Old Bill.

If it was not for the fact that they have found a niche in life earning gazoodles of the readies every week, earning more in that week that many people earn in a year and living the life of Croesus in their vast mansions in the depths of the countryside, safe and sound behind their security grilles, most not accustomed to the value of money but pretty sure of its power in some aspects but not in others, a fair number of them would undoubtedly have landed themselves in prison - and some actually have.

Some of these links confirm that fact that the majority of professional footballers in the UK are not, by any stretch of the imgination, "academically inclined", and even if given the chance to steer themselves in such a direction they either would not or could not, as for many of them merely signing their names to their contracts would be about as much as they could manage, and in some cases would have to have the contracts read out to them, with explanations.

Graeme le Saux, well educated, fair minded, broad minded and highly articulate and personable, was very much an exception, and - wow oh wow! - was a made to suffer for it - big time. The abuse he received from what can only be described as low-life, ineducable dross off the equally dross sink estates he had the misfortune to have as his team-mates in professional football, has received a great deal of publicity in the UK media.

http://careersadvice.direct.gov.uk/helpwithyourcareer/jobprofiles/JobProfile?jobprofileid=918&jobprofilename=Footballer&code=-964402431

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=166937&sectioncode=26

The truly obnoxious Robbie Fowler who contributed very much to Le Saux's vile mis-treatment and abuse - what a pillar of the community he is.......not!:

http://www.anfield-online.co.uk/squad/fowler.html

<I don't think for a single nano second that thousands of academics would ever pack into the stands of a professional football ground and jeer at the twenty two players as they ran onto the pitch, mocking and deiriding them for their lack of intellectual prowess and educational qualifications >

So, in your view, an intelligent person would never jeer at the intellectual prowess of professional footballers, or mock and deride them for their lack of academic qualifications?

Maybe you'd do better to direct that question at the Tory (sorry, I mean Conservative) MP for Macclesfiel - Sir Nicholas Winterton - who it seems is to retire at the forthcoming General Election - there really is a God after all.....

Surely he is the last of the old style English Tory public school educated Upper Class dinosaurs of rural Middle Class England with views and opinions firmly fixed in Victoriana.

Read all the comments - over a 1,000 of them - this upper class tw*t of a bloke really did stir up a hornet's nest with HIS outrageous comments.....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1251822/Tory-MP-Sir-Nicholas-Winterton-blasts-new-economy-travel-rule.html

I'm asking you, Damian. It's a simple enough question.

Do you think an intelligent person would jeer at the intellectual prowess of professional footballers, or deride them for their lack of academic qualifications?

<<
I'm asking you, Damian. It's a simple enough question. >>


There's no such thing as a simple question for Damian. I imagine if someone came up to him in the street and asked him what time it was he would like to enter into a 20 minute historical survey about all the different events that occurred precisely at 11:03. (I say "like" because he wouldn't actually be able to construct his rant without Google).

You mean the lack of intellectual prowess don't you? My wee ragamuffin dog George has more intellectual capacity than do most professional footballers...just consider the recent affair concerning that twit John Terry for instance....what passes for his brain lies between his legs.

***Do you think an intelligent person would....professional footballers.....deride them for their lack of academic qualifications?***

No, of course not...but those same footballers (along with a fair number of the "fans" on the terraces) deride the very rare player who does possess academic ability and displays a more civilised standard of conduct devoid of ignorant bigotry and boorish, yobbish behaviour.......that's the difference between them.

So, Damian, you agree that an intelligent person wouldn't deride professional footballers for their lack of academic qualifications.

What about in these extracts? They seem to relate to education. Would you say that they involve derision?

<Academically they have very little, if anything at all, in the way of operational brain cells>

<low-life, ineducable dross off the equally dross sink estates he had the misfortune to have as his team-mates in professional football>

<<and he is well known for reading The Guardian newspaper, often regarded as the reading refuge of the highly educated and edicated elite in the UK.

Furthermore, Graeme le Saux is an avowed supporter of the Conservative Party (mostly referred to by the less educationally endowed footballers as "the f*****g Tories).>>

You're one to talk of generally opposing concepts and then suggest that reading the Guardian and supporting the Conservatives are completely harmonous. If there ever was a party paper of the Labour Party, it is the Guardian.

You sound like a typically opionated, "holier than thou" twat, really a stereotypically reader of the Guardian. Thinks that in reading the Guardian he is somehow on a higher intellectual level than everyone else but in reality is simply following his other university mates like sheep, and quite frankly knows fuck all about how the world works.

<mostly referred to by the less educationally endowed footballers >

Thank you, GU. I overlooked that further example of a reference on Damian's part to footballers' educational attainments.

Damian:

You have conceded that an intelligent person wouldn't mock or deride footballers (or presumably anyone else) for their lack of academic qualifications.

Would you also agree that the quote above, and the two examples in my previous post, involve derision?

Damian's allowed to deride them because he isn't intelligent.

I totally agree with previous posts. Football is universal, and to stereotype such a sport, is ridicuous. A person does not have to be above or below a certain educational level to enjoy or play football.