Tottenham Hotspur defender Emerson Royal has admitted that he is struggling to learn English. Emerson has endured a difficult start to life in the Premier League, losing three of his first four league matches for the Lillywhites, including a 3-1 defeat to the aforementioned Arsenal. Now, the 22-year-old has claimed that he is finding it difficult adjusting to life in the English capital.
Emerson Royal said “English is a little harder to learn. 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. 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.”
Emerson joined from Barcelona on deadline day, signing for a reported £22.5million despite interest from Spurs’ local rivals Arsenal. In fact, the Brazilian international previously claimed that he held talks directly with Gunners’ technical director Edu, who eventually signed Takehiro Tomiasyu from Bologna instead.
