Scrutinizers of the spread of international English may like to note the two part series on “The Ascent of English” in The Financial Times published today (German managers on the value of English) and tomorrow (on English usage in China). You need to subscribe or take a free trial. Advice given to aspiring Anglophones includes:

Encourage employees from different countries to mix through an inter-company soccer league, which will lead to the use of many common and useful English words throughout the company.

I would have thought that, as in most contact sports, soccer players, as opposed to the game’s commentators, mostly bad-mouth each other on the pitch rather than talk about tactics, goals, teams and winning strategies. But though hard to get right in a foreign tongue, collective insulting is probably all part of the corporate game too.