Liverpool Football Club counts literally thousands of international linguistics experts amongst its fan base, it has emerged.
The thousands of people, of various ages and creeds, have spent the last few weeks getting in one almighty tizzy over widespread suggestion that their famous old club is somehow wrong to be fostering a siege mentality out of Luis Suarez’s racism charge.
Although eminent football writers have roundly criticised the powers that be at Anfield for their steadfast refusal to acknowledge that making skin colour-based jibes at an opposition player simply isn’t cricket, Reds fans from all around the world have been falling over each other to prove Suarez’s innocence by finally putting their Language, Linguistics & Cultural Studies degrees to good use.
Dave Bellowfield, from Bootle, said: “Suarez wasn’t being in any way insulting to Patrice Evra by calling him ‘negrito’. That’s just how they say ‘hiya buddy, let me buy you a steak dinner after the game’ in Uruguay.
When it was pointed out that Suarez did not in fact call Evra ‘negrito’, Bellowfield said: “Yes he did.”
Knut Dybdahl, from Bergen, said: “It’s all about the pronunciation of ‘negro’ – it’s not pronounced ‘knee grow’, as in the term deemed offensive in England.
“I’m one hundred per cent certain that, in the context in which Suarez used the word, it’s pronounced ‘delightful chap’. Evra is a monster for reacting angrily to these repeated expressions of endearment.
“I’ll be interested to see whether or not the FA intend to shoot him out of a canon into a brick wall just three feet away.”
Anurak Chaiboonma, from Koh Samui, said: “I think it’s disgraceful that Suarez can be banned for eight matches for using a word that everyone in Uruguay says all the time – literally all the time, so it sounds like one continuous, interminable slur – while Evra gets off scot-free for being a willing pawn in Sir Alex Ferguson’s latest blatant attempt to destabilise us.
“If at the end of the season we haven’t won the league, we’ll be sure to let everyone know that it was entirely down to this gross, gross injustice.”
Chad Krzyzanowski, from Baltimore, said: “I see no reason why I shouldn’t very publically declare that I know exactly what was said and in what tone, even though I obviously don’t.
“In that spirit, I would point out to your brazenly anti-Liverpool media that all Suarez said to Evra was that he doesn’t find Richard Pryor to be particularly funny and that he doesn’t understand all the fuss about Jay-Z and Kanye West’s collaboration album.”
He added: “If you think that makes Suarez a racist, then you can f*** off and die, you Manc c***.”