FIFA has made a dramatic U-turn just days into the World Cup after a ban on speaking Spanish at press conferences triggered a wave of fury. The six-week football spectacular got underway in North America last week, with some of the planet's biggest names descending on the continent in pursuit of the sport's most coveted prize.
However, attention swiftly turned away from events on the pitch when it emerged that players and coaches were being actively discouraged from speaking Spanish during certain official media appearances. The row blew up over the weekend when stars, including Brazil's Vinicius Junior and Morocco's Achraf Hakimi, were compelled to field questions in English, despite being fluent Spanish speakers.
In Hakimi's case, the PSG right-back was poised to respond to a question from a Mexican journalist when the reporter was abruptly cut off by a FIFA official and instructed to switch to English. The intervention sparked an uncomfortable moment that rapidly went viral, with Hakimi, who was born in Madrid, quipping: "How do I answer, in English or in Spanish?"
The situation sparked outrage on social media and amongst language campaigners, who were swift to highlight the absurdity of marginalising Spanish at a World Cup being co-hosted by Mexico and the United States, nations home to tens of millions of native Spanish speakers. In response, FIFA initially maintained that there was no blanket ban, instead citing a shortage of translation services.
Under the arrangement used during the tournament's opening days, players, coaches and journalists were restricted to English and the official languages of the two competing teams. But under updated regulations announced on Monday, journalists will now be permitted to pose questions in Spanish at any official World Cup press conference, while players and coaches will be free to answer in Spanish irrespective of which nations are contesting the match.
Translation services will also be made available throughout. The decision was praised by the Instituto Cervantes, Spain's state-sponsored body devoted to championing Spanish language and culture worldwide.
Its director, Luis Garcia Montero, had described the initial policy as "baffling" and said FIFA had "put itself offside" by shutting out one of the globe's most widely-spoken languages. He added that the approach "made no sense at all", referencing the "more than 60 million people of Hispanic origin in the United States, of whom more than 43 million state that their mother tongue is Spanish".
In a light-hearted post on social media marking the U-turn, the institute simply stated: "Bravo to VAR."
