Did Tiago Really Just Say That?
By: Greg | June 26th, 2007
I know he went to Juventus so that makes it Italian football news, but hey he’s Portuguese so I’m going to feel free to comment while all that’s going on with the Liga is Belenenses strengthening its squad with some mid level players, Benfica potentially keeping Miccoli (bigger than you may think), and Sporting continuing its Eastern European Raiding Party.
That being said, did anyone at all pick up on what Tiago said to the press after signing with Juventus? If not, let me spell the quote out for you here: “In France they used to call me ‘the washing machine’, because I can manage tricky balls, ‘cleaning’ them and serving them to my teammates.” Okay, I’m going to stop and say that my interpretation of the quote is ENTIRELY juvenile. But is this just something that is translated into another language and sounds absolutely hilarious? This reminds me of the Schwetty Balls sketch on Saturday Night Live (wow remember when THAT show was funny?) with Alec Baldwin doing a radio show filled with innuendo.
Also, the metaphor is a stretch. Are French sportswriters really that bad at coming up with nicknames? What this quote tells me is that Tiago has an uncanny knack for taking crap passes from his teammates and making them manageable. So how does that make him like a washing machine? Maybe more like a hair conditioner where he takes the “tangled balls”(yay for more stupid college humor) and makes them more managebale, much like some sort of hair product.
Another thing to consider: what’s with the second step? He takes the ball in then CLEANS IT!? I can’t even think of how this would apply. I can see him being called the manager, as in managing tricky balls and then serving them to his teammates, but where does the cleaning come in? Either way, the French media should have known that they already have two words to describe a player with Tiago’s cleaning skills: Claude Makélélé.
Category: Super Liga
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Comments
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Yeah, I think you’re losing it in the translation. Most words have different connotations in different language, and while “The Washing Machine” might not seem to fitting for a football player, in Spanish (at least) it’s not so bad (”La Lavadora”).
For example, Karl “The Mailman” Malone doesn’t really translate as well to other languages…
Posted from
United States
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Yeah, I was also wondering what the original French word(s) were. It might be different in the native tongue.
But…on the other hand…I am fighting the urge to burst out in a Beavis-and-Butthead snigger and say:
huhuhhuhuhuhuh he said “Schwetty balls.”
(and, in a fit of uncharacteristic maturity, I am refusing to comment on the combination of the ideas of Tiago and ball-washing.)
Posted from
United States -
Apparently, at Juve, they found his ball-cleaning abilities good enough…
Tiago is not Makelele, he is not just a holding mid either, he is mainly a box-to-box mid. Honestly I don’t see what the fuss about the nick-name is… It seems completelly fitting, in my mind. He’s around in the miidfield and picks up the left overs and gets the game going, covers the back of the mid who went up, supports the attack when there’s nobody else to follow up, cleans it when everybody else is taken, etc… The all-purpose mid, hence the “washing machine”… Doesn’t matter what you put in, it comes out clean… It also counts… Not just scoring and etc…
Except, of course, the “ball-washing” metaphore, proposed by Laurie… What he does in his free time, what is hobbie is or even how he makes money on the side, is his business…
Anywsay, Laurie, recurrently in european surveys, Portuguese are rated as the europeans that shower more often… Case you didn’t know… I can tell you we do it more often than the dutch (at least I do)… 
Maybe he became a shower-room reference, or even popular in the shower momment, in Lyon, for undisclosed reasons… Posted from
Netherlands
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