What’s said in the dressing room stays in the dressing room. And what’s said in Dennis Kutrieb’s post-match huddle stays there, too.
Except on this occasion, we can reveal that match winner Bobby-Joe Taylor expressed his deep affection for his teammates with a smattering of a foreign language as he exclaimed “Ich liebe dich!” (German for “I love you!”) to one and all following Saturday’s win over Hungerford Town.
And this was no mere post-match euphoria at play here. For Taylor has been learning German in his downtime as a welcome to his management staff and teammates Sefa Kahraman and Alexander Eirich.
“I give the two German boys a lift to the training ground every day,” Taylor explained to us after his man-of-the-match performance on Saturday. “They’re very, very, very, nice boys, really nice boys and they’re willing to learn.
“So I felt out of respect, it was just something I thought, you know what… I tried to learn French last year for some of the boys when I was at Dover. I found that a little bit more difficult whereas the German language I feel is a little bit easier because it’s almost, how you see it is how you say it.
“They’re helping me and I’m just trying to help them – Sefa’s Turkish German and actually his English is probably better than Alex’s, but Alex is really willing to learn. And like I say, he’s a really, really nice guy. And so I felt maybe I could try and help him out, he’s trying to help me out and it’s actually quite enjoyable.
“So I do a little bit for 30 minutes or an hour a day. I’m getting there. I’m at the difficult part at the moment with the pronouns, when you say ‘are, there, how, where’ and that sort of stuff in their terms which is a bit difficult. But it’s enjoyable, I’m probably not going to get fluent, I’m just trying to help out with little bits and bobs, especially in the football terms, so it’s just something I’m trying to do.”
