Wednesday's interview of Laurent Merlin might have been the strangest I have ever been in on. While Chivas was finishing their training session, colleague Troy Santiago - who has been a Galaxy Spanish-language radio presence for a while, Chivas PR guy Keegan Pierce and I chatted about the team. When the subject of Merlin came up, we noted that Merlin speaks no English or Spanish for that matter. Keegan said he spoke French which he told me a while ago which I had of course forgotten.
I nabbed John Cunliffe and after a brief interview I went back over to a gathering crowd. Santiago had nabbed Merlin after all and Keegan was getting ready to translate. Troy asked questions in Spanish, Keegan translated them to French, Merlin answered in French and Keegan translated the answers back in English. It was rather unconventional but it worked.
By the way, Keegan's the guy sporting the NHL playoff beard.
As a result of this game of trasnaltion, maybe, the story was rearranged to the Galaxy sauce...
ReplyDeleteI mean that Frank Yallop has never said a work to Preki. I did talk to Preki, whom was introduced to me by Bob Bradley, the very next day of the negative asnwer we received from the Galaxy. It was a Saturday, just before a scrimmage game oppsing Galaxy and Red Bulls. Actually, I did speak with Bruce Arena as well, 15 or 20 minutes before speaking with Preki. Preki gave a immediate shot to Laurent inviting him to play the very same day agaisnt UC Santa BArbara. he then offered him to stay for a week trial...As for teh red Bulls, they were also interested and pushed Laurent to come with them but a bit too late. Also, laurent felt good in LA, felt very good with his chivas teamate, and liked the football played there (more latin), as well as Preki whose straight-forwardness is a valued qaulity in the eyes of LAurent.
I am not sure if you were the one who wrote the story on lasocccernews but, by reading your post, I figured I should explain what Laurent did say in French,w hich was apprently completely lost in translation!!