What football players say in the background remains a secret for the public

Chelsea players Romelu Lukaku and Hakim Ziyech, still sweaty and panting from their efforts, walk across the field after the halftime signal at Brighton-Chelsea. Their club is leading 1-0, but there seems to be some disagreement between the Belgian striker and the Moroccan midfielder. What they say exactly is initially difficult to understand; Ziyech puts a hand to his mouth as he talks to his teammate in Dutch.

A day later, countless articles full of speculation were written about the ‘quarrel’, the video was extensively analyzed and Ziggo Sport answer: the conversation was about a pass in a promising attack. It was a football-related discussion like there are dozens on the field every match, but because Ziyech covered his mouth, there was a hint of mystery about the widely reported consultation.

While talking behind the scenes has become part of football folklore, this was not yet the case in 2010. When Robin van Persie was substituted in a World Cup match against Slovakia in that year, he bit national coach Bert van Marwijk scornfully. What exactly he said was not entirely clear. After the competition, the NOS hired lip readers to be able to crack the code. “You have to change Sneijder,” Van Persie would have said. The striker himself denied that: “I have not mentioned any names,” he said. “Then you should hire better lip readers.”

Coincidence or not, but in the period after the World Cup this phenomenon – talking with one hand over the mouth so that it is not clear to TV viewers what is being said – became increasingly fashionable at Orange. Rafael van der Vaart, for example, expressed his dissatisfaction in September 2010 after a change in an international match against Finland. Mark van Bommel covered his mouth to the outside world while talking on the field with his father-in-law, national coach Bert van Marwijk after the embarrassing European Championship elimination in 2012.

From Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo to players in the Eredivisie, talking behind the scenes on the pitch has become commonplace. Sometimes footballers forget in the heat of battle that lip readers can watch, which can lead to precarious situations. Paris Saint-Germain forward Kylian Mbappe unleashed a media storm last September after he disrespected fellow star Neymar for “clochard” had worn out after a change. It should be clear: all verbal expressions of top players on the field, if visible, are picked up and extensively analyzed.

Spain and South America

It is not entirely clear where the behind-the-scenes talk started. The popular Spanish football program El Dia Despues already in the 1990s very regularly played audio fragments of conversations between players or trainers during football matches, simply recorded with a camera microphone. The possibility of conversations or comments being broadcast on national television caused footballers to become somewhat more cautious. “I think it became common in the late 1990s,” said José Larrazo, then involved with El Día Después, in 2017 against Hoy about talking behind the scenes on the Spanish football fields.

According to communications consultant Phil Hall, the phenomenon originated in South America, where TV programs (such as the Brazilian fantastic) have been hiring lip readers for years to explain what is being said on and around the pitch, he told the British tabloid The Sun.

It is therefore not entirely clear where and when the phenomenon started exactly, also because talking behind the hand is also used in other sports – such as in the NBA by star basketball player LeBron James, who sometimes even holds the collar of his shirt to his mouth so that lip readers can’t see what he’s saying.

It is striking, however, that the phenomenon received an extra impulse during the World Cup in Brazil in 2014. An English lip reader announced before the tournament that she would closely follow all statements made by national coach Roy Hodgson and his players and would put them on Twitter. And Brazilian TV channels invited lip readers who watched all the matches and practices, so that every sentence that left the mouth of a Brazilian footballer could be captured and analysed. It caused annoyance with national coach Luiz Felipe Scolari, certainly because expectations were sky-high and the tournament was not very successful. He and his players continued to speak on the pitch afterward, not only so as not to make unwise statements, but also not to reveal Scolari’s battle plan.

“I have honestly never understood it, but that may also be due to the level at which I play,” says Sparta defender Bart Vriends. He can’t remember ever covering his mouth on the field. „It is of course the Eredivisie, but so many cameras do not zoom in on what I have against Aaron Meijers [verdediger van Sparta] say.”

Vriends understands that the absolute top football players at, for example, World Cups are careful, but at other levels it feels “a bit exaggerated and unnecessary” for him. Asked about the reasons why other players do talk behind the scenes, the defender says that he thinks that not only the fear of the cameras, but also copying behavior and habituation play a role. In the football world, the actions of star players often become commonplace.

The Sparta defender does have an idea that footballers are talking about when they don’t want the outside world to watch. “About a teammate who does everything alone or hands in all the balls. Or about the trainer who is blaring along the side. It will be like that. Those are the moments when players visit each other to gossip.” Although it sometimes happens that football players only exchange a few pleasantries after a match and then still keep their mouths shut, says Vriends.

There seem to be two main reasons for players to be more careful with their statements on the pitch: the proliferation of cameras – at least thirty in Premier League matches – and the rise of social media. Conversations on the field are now almost always registered, and can quickly spread all over the world via Twitter, for example.

In 2019, a short video of Manchester United defender Phil Jones viral, because he would have referred in the stands to a possible dismissal of his then trainer, Ole Gunnar Solskjær. Vice chairman Ed Woodward, who sat in the stands under Jones, denied this and later explained in an interview that something else was said, but the damage was already done. Lip readers hired by tabloids also ran off with Jones’ statement.

Offensive Comments

It is ‘plausible’ that the talk behind the scenes has to do with the rise of social media, says Jacco van Sterkenburg, professor by special appointment at Erasmus University. He knows of no research that suggests a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the two, but does suspect that social media contributes to a football culture in which talking behind the scenes is considered normal. “I think the rise of social media contributes to the fact that players know even better that they are under a magnifying glass and that people are watching them,” he says.

Obviously, putting your hand over your mouth can prevent abusive comments or the battle plan from appearing on social media. According to communications advisor Hall, there is another reason why footballers often talk on the pitch with their hands over their mouths: to be more intelligible in a noisy stadium.

“Bad bullshit”, according to Vriends. “If you stand next to each other within a distance of one or two meters, you can understand each other perfectly in a full stadium,” he says. Hall’s theory is also disproved by the fact that players in empty stadiums still often cover their mouths when they speak. “It has to do with the cameras. With the possible threat of a close-up, recording what a football player says to a teammate. And also a bit with an exaggerated fear of players about exposed to be,” said Vriends.

Footballers’ talking behind the scenes came under a magnifying glass last year when Slavia Prague defender Ondrej Kudela racially abused his opponent, Glen Kamara of Scotland’s Rangers, during a Europa League match. Kudela was banned for ten games by UEFA. Clarence Seedorf – ambassador for diversity to the European Football Association – then called for a ban on covering the mouth when players speak to the referee or opponents.

At this time, no sanctions have been announced for talking behind the scenes. Van Sterkenburg, who has been researching racism and football for years, would like to have more insight into how frequently this occurs. “The extent of the problem is still unclear to me,” he says. Van Sterkenburg proposes to make an inventory of players how often racist expressions occur when talking behind the hand and calls the example of Kamara “enough reason to look at this seriously”.

For the time being, talking behind the scenes will still be seen on the fields, as a peculiarity that has now become part of football culture.