You’ve been saying AZ Alkmaar all wrong and 12 other teams too… here’s why

WE ALL think we know our football.

But do we know it quite as well as we think? Really?

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Because there are a whole load of teams whose names we’ve been saying wrong for ages – many of us without even realising.

A large part of that is down to geography.

Of the 92 clubs in English professional football, all but two have the name of their city, town, borough or region in their title.

The exceptions are Port Vale and Arsenal – although the Gunners were originally called Woolwich Arsenal when they played in South London.

As a result, we often tend to add the place names for some clubs that go by a single name to help us clarify which team we are referring to – more on that later.

For other examples, it is a case of mistranslation – or, more specifically, partial translation.

Finally, it could simply be a bit of laziness or ignorance.

Anyway, with that all said, who are some of the regular football clubs we mispronounce or simply get wrong?

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AZ Alkmaar is a common mistake.

The Dutch side are actually called Alkmaar Zaanstreek.

This often gets nicknamed to AZ Alkmaar – but the A in AZ stands for Alkmaar.

So AZ Alkmaar would mean Alkmaar Zaanstreek Alkmaar.

To make things even more confusing, Alkmaar is the city the club is based in while Zaanstreek refers to the Zaan district in North-West Netherlands. Got it?

Sticking in the Eredeivisie, there are regularly mentions of PSV Eindhoven when in actual fact the club’s full name is Philips Sport Vereniging, or PSV for short.

There is no mention of Eindhoven, the city where they are based.

The same rule applies to various other teams – where the city has been added for overseas fans to grasp exactly where they play.

See Zenit Saint Petersburg and CSKA Moscow in Russia – officially Zenit and CSKA – AEK Athens.

The Greek outfit are formally Athlitiki Enosis Konstantinoupoleos – with no mention of the capital city name – while AEK is pronounced as one word rather than A-E-K.

We don’t do the same to PSG Paris, Juventus Turin, Schalke Gelsenkirchen or Real Betis Seville.

In Spain, it is Atletico de Madrid, not Atletico Madrid or worse still Athletico Madrid.

Athletic should be used for the team in Bilbao.

But they are Athletic Club or simply Athletic – and definitely not Athletic Bilbao.

In Spain, there is just one major club it could refer to whereas in England we have Charlton and Wigan, for example.

Across the border in Portugal, it is a similar mistake with Sporting Lisbon.

They are actually Sporting Clube de Portugal, Sporting CP or Sporting – but not Sporting Lisbon.

It is such a touchy subject that a #NotSportingLisbon campaign was launched to raise awareness for the error.

The 2010 Champions League final was contested between Bayern Munich and Inter Milan.

However, Inter Milan should be referred to as Internazionale or Inter – although the official name is Football Club Internazionale Milano.

As for the German giants, Bayern Munich sees half of the name translated into English – Munchen to Munich – but Bayern left in German.

So it should either be Bayern Munchen – the official name – or Bavaria Munich.

One of the other big teams in Germany also needs flagging.

RB Leipzig are part of the Red Bull group along with Red Bull Salzburg and New York Red Bulls.

But the RB in RB Leipzig’s name does not stand for Red Bull – well, not technically.

It is no coincidence that the letters are RB – to make people think of Red Bull – alongside the red bulls on their logo.

However, the German FA ban corporate company brands in club names.

So they found a workaround and called the club RasenBallsport Leipzig instead – RasenBallsport translates as Lawn Ball Sports.

Many refer to the Serbian team as Red Star Belgrade when “red star” is simply a literal English translation of their official name, Crvena Zvezda.

And finally, the 1985-86 European Cup was won by Steaua Bucuresti, not Steaua Bucharest.

Although they now have a new name, formally switching to FCSB in 2017 as a shortened version of FC Steaua Bucuresti.

But the team is categorically not called Steaua Bucharest – which would be like the half-translation of Bayern Munich – because “steaua” is “star” in Romanian.

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AP:Associated Press

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