UEFA to bring out football dictionary

By Mark Ledsom

BERNE, Switzerland (Reuters) - European soccer's ruling body UEFA is to bring out a tri-lingual football dictionary with about 2,000 entries.

It will contain "official terms used by UEFA and FIFA, as well as terms used by professionals and ordinary fans in everyday football life," UEFA said on Wednesday.

Subjects covered will include the game itself, stadiums and security, equipment, medical matters, the media, management and administration.

"Football cannot live entirely without its own language," UEFA president Michel Platini said in the book's foreword.

"Players and coaches need to communicate in order to follow training routines and tactical instructions...and the game's administrators need to be able to converse and exchange opinions and ideas in precise detail."

Published in English, German and French, it will help "multilingual communication in the football world," UEFA said.

The dictionary will contain some of the sport's more colourful terms, such as slang for heavy defeats, but is not being marketed at regular football fans.

"It's primarily to help the sport's administrators and perhaps coaches such as Ottmar Hitzfeld who will be taking over the Switzerland team later this year with no real knowledge of French," UEFA's head of language services Florian Simmen told Reuters.

"But it is also available in normal bookstores so any women who want to really impress their husbands during Euro 2008 should definitely think about buying it."

Produced by German reference book publishers Langenscheidt, it will be presented in Munich on May 7 ahead of Bayern Munich's league match against Arminia Bielefeld.