Now in international duty with Brazil, Tottenham Hotspur fullback Emerson Royal is featured today in a big interview with local outlet Globo Esporte.
The player’s first appearances for the London side have given him another chance at the national team, so besides answering to several questions about the World Cup Qualifiers, the 22-year-old also talked about his adaptation to London.
As with most South American players, Emerson has been struggling a little to learn English all of a sudden, even though he became fluent in Spanish when playing in La Liga.
“English is a little harder to learn”, Emerson Royal told Globo Esporte.
“Spanish was different, a little more like Portuguese, you could get a bit of a sense of what people wanted to tell you. Not here, if you don’t know, it’s hard to understand, because you have no idea what people are telling you. The first few days were very complicated because I didn’t understand anything at all.”
“Today I can understand a lot, I can communicate, not 100%, far from it, but now I can communicate more with people, I understand more things. Now I’m going to study more too, it’ll be easier. So I think that language is now a problem, a difficulty, but in a short period of time I’ll work it out fine.”
Emerson also talked about other classic issues that South Americans normally have in England: the weather and the food.
“The strangest thing in the beginning is the weather. It’s not that cold now, but you can see that it’s much colder here than in other countries I’ve been in. And also the language, the language is a little complicated, I don’t speak English yet. But when you arrive, different language, complicated to get used to.
“But I will work on that, the language and working to adapt as quickly as possible to the cold. But for the rest, food, at the club, which has players I’ve played with, like Lo Celso, has South American and Brazilian players, so for me it’s more relaxed in this sense of adaptation.”
Signed by Tottenham on a €25m deal, Emerson has made six appearances for the club so far.
In that same interview, the player also mentioned he’d been in touch with Arsenal, with Gunners director Edu Gaspar calling him, but fate took him to Spurs in the end.
The Brazilian claims now to be adapting to the English game, as he got used to La Liga and now needs more strength to succeed in the Premier League.
“The Premier League is the best in the world today, it’s very competitive, you play the last placed and you can lose a game 2-0, the difficulty is very high. So it’s a lot of transition and strength.
“A little different from La Liga, which has more football played than a game of more strength. Here it’s physical strength, a lot of speed, but we adapt, it’s normal. I come from three years of a totally different league. But I don’t see this as a problem. In the shortest possible time I will adapt.”
Emerson now faces Venezuela, Colombia and Uruguay with Brazil, and would need to rush back to England to play Tottenham’s game against Newcastle United on the 17th of October.
