Language barrier making it ‘incredibly difficult’ for Arne Slot to play Igor Paixão | OneFootball

Feyenoord manager Arne Slot has admitted that the language barrier is making it “incredibly difficult” for him to play new signing Igor Paixão.

There was much excitement when the Rotterdam club announced the signing of Paixão in the summer given his impressive performances in Brazil.

However, the winger has only started once since then and hasn’t been given a huge amount of playing time off the bench either, despite Sebastian Szymanski picking up an injury.

Explaining why, Slot said it’s because, due to his lack of English, Paixão can’t understand his instructions.

“It’s incredibly difficult when I say ‘go, go, go’ and he doesn’t know what I mean,” he said.

“With ‘press, press, press’, he doesn’t know what I’m saying either. If you have a lot of trouble communicating with your fellow players, you have to be very good if you want to make a difference.”

“Of course, he takes English lessons, so that he at least knows the simple words you need in the field.”