The Champions League is back.
The knock-out stages of Europe’s top club competition resumes tonight, with Paris Saint-Germain hosting Barcelona, and Benfica playing Borussia Dortmund.
To mark the return of the tournament, Uefa have compiled a helpful guide on how to correctly pronounce tricky players’ names. Because, according to the association’s website: “English speakers tend to mangle foreign names.”
They may have a point, because it turns out we have been pronouncing a number of player’s names incorrectly, including Pepe.
The correct pronunciation of the Real Madrid defender’s name is “Pep.”
According to Uefa: “Pepe does not use that second vowel if you pronounce his name in Portuguese.”
Here’s the correct pronunciation of some Madrid players’ names:
Dani Carvajal – Car-va-hal
Mateo Kovačić – Ko-va-chitch
Toni Kroos – Crows
Luka Modrić – Mod-rich
Pepe – Pep
James Rodríguez – Ha-mess
Here’s the correct pronunciation of some Manchester City players’ names. It turns out you’ve also been pronouncing İlkay Gündoğan’s wrong.
Willy Caballero – Caba-yair-o
İlkay Gündoğan – Ilk-eye Gun-doch-wan
Jesús Navas – Hess-oos
Bacary Sagna – Sa-nyah
And here’s the correct pronunciation of Atletico Madrid’s players’ names, just in case Antoine Griezmann signs for Manchester United:
Nicolás Gaitán – Guy-tan
Antoine Griezmann – An-twan Gree-ez-man
Koke – Ko-kay
Saúl Ñíguez – Sow-ool Nyee-gess
Stefan Savić – Sa-vich
Nicolás Schiappacasse – Ski-appa-cass-ey
Šime Vrsaljko – Shee-may Ver-sal-ko
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