I bet many of you, non hispanic players of the TU-Liga, have found yourselves in this rather puzzling situation at least once: You are playing against one or more hipanic players, or acting as refree with them on the field, and suddenly something goes wrong. A nasty faul over the (probaly too technical for this liga) hipanic player, a goal missed by milimeters, a controversial decision by the ref... It does not matter. The fact is that the warm mind of the mediterranean player has already reached its boliling point. The result of this is a nasty torrent of unteligible words that could only be described as vocal tract & tongue acrobatics. For the ears of someone untrained in the language of Cervantes it should sound something like this:

GGGRAPLA puta BlaPLoOPLO! LALO PUTA blap BLAP! RRRRRRoPLOPputisssima BLAPRRRploP!

Unfortunately the only piece of information that is often recovered from this dialectical defraglation is Puta. That is, the spanish-but-international word for whore (prostitute, bitch...), often used to imply doubts about the honorability of someones lineage in an indirect manner. However this is often not the case on the footbal pitch and this fundamental misunderstanding has been the cause of various unfair expulsions this season. We would therefore like to impart a short curse on the use of Puta in spanish, aimed mainly at refrees and disoriented oponents that might have felt (of course erroneously) insulted.

Contrary to common belief, the word Puta is not always used to imply that the refrees/opponent dear mother has performed sex (oral, anal... the posibilities are almost infinite) in exchange for money or other goods. Puta has a wide range of uses as enfatic or even self deprecating exclamation. Lets take for example the typical:

A) Penalty!, de puta madre!

B) Penalty!, me cago en tu puta madre!

C) Me cago en mi puta madre... Penalty...

Would you be able to tell in which case you are expected to hit the hispanic player in the face, in which you should ignore him and in which you should try to cheer the poor fellow up?. I bet no. The answer is B, A, and C. As you migh see Puta might be used to express simply joy (A), hate directed towars someone (B) or frustration (C) with very little changes in the formluation. To make it just a bit more difficult the spanish language has a huge variety of inocuous-but-ugly-sounding words to combine with. Lets see some examples taken from real in-the-pitch situations:

[Player recieves a foul and screams loud, falls on the ground, elevates all extremities on the air like a dead cockroach, then stands up and says to the ref.] Pero me-cago-hasta-en-tu-puta-madre, si ha sio falta joder!. No lo has visto?. Estas ciego o que?.

This might sound like a bit rough or even insulting but nothing further from reality. The player is only expressing his worries about the posibility of the referee suffering from some kind of temporal visual impairment. All spanish players, particularly BEKA players, have the highest of concerns about the health of the refree and his asistants.

[Player performs an infortunate action that ends in penalty, turns to the ref and says] Que no fue penalty hijo de puta! [points at the ref. with his finger] Tú, hijo de puta!. 

Now, here an inexpert TU-Liga refree would interpret this as a direct insult. We cant blame him. A player pointing at the referee and babbling some words with puta in the middle could be easily mistaken as an insult. This is however something completely different. The player has interiorized the referees decision from the beginning (as every BEKA player is taught to do) and is only expressing anger against himself, pointing at the ref in approbation of his decision.

[Game with various polemical situatios all in disfavour of the hispanic team ends too soon. Various hipanic players run against the referee shouting simltaneously] Pero que coño has hecho?. Cabron de mierda!, a ti te voy a romper la cara.

This last case is the easier. No Puta, no chance of being an insult. All the rest of spanish words, no matter how much RRRR and JJJJJ they have, or how many saliva is expulsed during their pronunciation, are completely inocuous. However, in this very particular situation the spanish team might be about to express their joy by inviting the ref. to their traditional "lichamiento popular" dance, related with flamenco in the sence that there is plenty of screaming, and which needs of a deep understading of spanish culture. It is therefore recomended to reject the offer by running in the opposite direction at maximum speed.

Thats it for now. We hope that this short course helps to avoid some of the typical missunderstandings on the pitch regarding spanish footbal culture. Stay tuned for our advanced course. Heres the teaser trailer: