Yannick Bolasie and Romelu Lukaku are the most prolific duo in the Premier League right now. The former has bagged four assists for Lukaku, who has netted on seven occasions. Their exploits have helped lift Everton into sixth place after ten games, and it turns out they are using a rare African language to communicate on the pitch in order to hoodwink opposition defenders, the Daily Mail has revealed.
‘We are both very proud of our heritage,’ Bolasie told the Liverpool Echo.
‘It really helps when we talk in our language, Lingala, and I know his cousin, who plays with me for DR Congo. We speak Lingala on the pitch’.
‘There aren’t too many defenders in the league who speak it, so that gives us a little bit of an advantage’.
Lingala is spoken by roughly 10-15million people across north west DR Congo, Angola and the Central African Republic, which incorporates English, Spanish, French and Portuguese conventions, and as it turns out, sharing a mother tongue has been handy in Bolasie and Lukaku’s on-field chemistry. With Chelsea the opponents this weekend, whether Antonio Conte’s defence opt to revise with a phrasebook remains to be seen.
Elsewhere, the Liverpool Echo reports via Chilean outlet El Mercurio that a former Argentina legend has favoured Toffees defender Ramiro Funes Mori as Argentina captain and suggests Lionel Messi be made to relinquish the armband.
Daniel Passarella, the man behind the comments, skippered Argentina to World Cup glory in 1978, and believes Messi should pass the armband over to the Everton defender.
Passarella claims that the centre-half is already a “great leader” and is more than deserving of the honour of captaining the national team.
“Not giving the captaincy of Argentina to Messi would take a weight off of him,” Passarella is quoted as saying.
“I think Argentina already have a great leader, which is Ramiro Funes Mori. He should be the captain.”
“The leader of the group is something different to the way you play and the talent of each player.
“I admire Messi, but I think his personality, his way of being, is withdrawn and timid.”
On the transfer front, the Liverpool Echo also claims that according to reports elsewhere that Everton could be in for a four-way battle to secure the signature of transfer target Lamine Koné, if they choose to resume their pursuit of the Senegalese in January.
Sunderland defender Koné was a target for Ronald Koeman in the summer, with £16million bid from the Toffees turned down by the Black Cats hierarchy.
Koné eventually put pen to paper on a new Sunderland deal, but he may still be on his way out of the Stadium of Light if Sunderland’s dire start to the season under former Everton boss David Moyes continues.
Everton’s opponents in the race for Koné are thought to be West Ham, Chelsea and Manchester United, with all four clubs ready to try to tempt the defender away from Wearside in January.
Koné joined the Black Cats from Lorient in January of 2016 for a fee of £5million, and with a new contract also running, the club would look to recoup a sizeable fee for the 27-year-old defender, which could be in the region of £20million.
Featured Image: All Rights Reserved by Stuart MacFarlane.