Joe Hart has been telling friends that it’s ‘impossible to know’ what the Italian press made of his Torino debut, even though he has access to internet translation sites and the headlines are almost identical to English.
Sipping his morning cappuccino in a bar in Turin, his face screwed up in an apparent vain attempt at understanding, Hart leafed through Tuttosport, La Gazzetta dello Sport and the Corriere dello Sport before telling friends back home that he was none the wiser as to how his debut performance against Atalanta had been viewed.
However, it has emerged that a bi-lingual barista who recognised the Manchester City loanee offered to translate the piece for him, but Hart insisted there was no way the sentiments of the piece could be faithfully translated into English.
It was like watching a monkey try to make a risotto
“Mr. Hart seemed to be trying to read a report about his [abject] performance in Tuttosport,” barista Massimo Rossi told FourFourTwo.
“He turned the paper in several different directions, then just tried mashing his face into it repeatedly. It was like watching a monkey try to make a risotto.
“But when I told him that I spoke fluent English and could translate, he just kept muttering ‘we will never know’ and shaking his head at the ‘Hart, che disastro’ headline.
“Then he got up and left, throwing a wad of English currency at the desk and wrestling with the door, which was actually open.”
Lost meaning
Friends of Hart have reported that the goalkeeper is adamant the Italian response to his maiden Serie A outing is so nuanced it cannot be described in terms an English person could understand.
“He [Joe Hart] has access to the internet like anyone else and, let’s face it, it doesn’t take a dedicated polyglot to decipher that ‘clamoroso errore’ isn’t going to be good,” a friend told FFT.
“But he keeps saying that you need to truly enter the Italian psyche and to have a comprehensive knowledge of the nation’s tumultuous political history to have any chance of discovering the meaning of the articles.
“I’d be inclined to believe Joe genuinely couldn’t work it out, but we’ve all seen him reading the original 14th century Italian text of Dante’s Inferno and he can find his way around Petrarch like the best of them.”
Please note: this satirical news story is not real. But you knew that already, obviously.
More Back of the Net • New features every day on FourFourTwo.com
