10 Spanish Phrases Gary Neville Needs to Learn as Valencia Manager

For starters, Gary would do well to make sense of the Valencia team’s nickname, Los Che. Che is a reference to the word “xe,” an exclamation in Valencian dialect which roughly translates as “hey!”

When Gary’s team starts playing, he’ll be hoping all his players have great big cucumbers. No, we’re not talking about the vegetable, or any part of a player’s anatomy. In Spanish, a great big cucumber is a long-range, curling shot at the goal.

In Spain, sometimes players run around the football pitch showing each other wood. Obviously, this will make G-Nev angry. But maybe not quite as angry as you’d think. Because in Spanish “showing wood” means fouling a player in a particularly horrible way.

No, Gary won’t be ditching the Valencia uniform for a lick of yellow body paint. “Paint him yellow”, in Spanish, means give him a yellow card. And if someone shows one of Gary’s players the wood, you can bet that the famously outspoken Mancunian will want to yell “píntalo de amarillo” from the sidelines.

Literally translating as “the tunnel”, this is how they refer to a nutmeg (when the ball slips between a player’s legs) in Spanish. Not to be used when ordering something grated on your eggnog - in that case, you’ll be after “nuez moscada.”

The most important thing a coach needs to talk about with his team (after cucumbers, wood and tunnels) is tactics. Gary should sit down and hablar de tácticas with his team as soon as possible. Otherwise he’ll be screaming, “¿Para qué te traje?” at them in no time.

As well as being a handy way to nag at a disinterested friend in the stands, this is a common phrase shouted in dismay when a player misses a shot or scores an own goal.

There isn’t an unusual post-match tradition in Spain where 22 sweaty football players bathe each other in a giant foamy bathtub. Instead, “giving your opponents a bath” means beating them in a convincing way. So convincing, in fact, that they probably will need a bath afterwards.

We’re not quite convinced of the benefits of a hobbling striker, but nevertheless, this is a term used to describe a particularly good goal-scorer.

For Gary’s sake, we hope he’ll have plenty of chances to say this one during his time at Valencia.