How do you pronounce the strangest names of EURO2020 players?

The EUROs have always represented one of the moments in which to find out new talents, young promises but also unknown players with unpronounceable names. In Group A, closed by Italian national team in first place with nine points and zero goals conceded, the Turkish national team could have put in difficulty Italian journalists like Fabio Caressa, Beppe Bergomi or Alberto Rimedio and Antonio Di Gennaro and UEFA has decided to intervene in advance before listening the names of the players maimed in the worst ways. Being able to pronounce Çağlar Söyüncü, Wojciech Szczęsny, Nicholas Hämäläinen, Joakim Mæhle and Michy Batshuayi correctly seems almost a feat and for this reason a phonetic guide has been drawn up to pronounce the most complicated names in the closest way to the right one.

For each of the participating countries, UEFA has also decided to add some useful information on the phonetic aspects of the language of that specific national. For Italian national football teams, for example, we read that "the commonly-made mistake is to pronounce a 'ch' like an English 'ch' – it is more like a 'k'. Lorenzo Insigne is a tough one to get spot on – linguists may note that his 'gn' works like a Spanish ñ".

The longer guides accompany the players of the national teams of Eastern and Northern Europe, where the alphabets are much more complicated than ours. The Poland national team one has 35 letters (9 vowels and 26 consonants), the Finnish one 29 (with three graphemes such as Æ, Ø, Å) as well as the Turkish one, which in terms of accents and phonetics is very distant from Italian. Turkey (11), the Czech Republic (10) and Slovakia (9) will be the teams with the highest number of reports.

624 players divided into 24 national teams, each with a different linguistic nuance. In order not to drive fans, commentators and insiders crazy - or simply to be cool with friends at the bar - it is better to consult this guide before touching on the subject "Belgium goalkeepers" or "Turkey defense".