Gillingham have roped in one of their sports scientists to help overcome the language barrier with their new loan signing.
Tricky forward Jorge Hurtado moved to Watford from his native Colombia in the summer on a six-year deal and has now been loaned to the Gills for the remainder of the current campaign to gain experience.
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Learning the language will be another challenge for the 20-year-old and the Gills have at least one person who can speak his lingo – well, kind of.
Head coach Stephen Clemence said: “The difficult thing is that he doesn’t speak any English so thankfully we have got one of our sports scientists who is fluent in Portuguese, which is close enough to Spanish.
“That has helped us but we’ve all got the Google translate on our phone now and we are trying to help him along. He has a big smile on his face, he is happy to be here and I am happy to have him here too. I think he will be good for us.”
The language barrier hasn’t stopped players from flourishing at the Gills in recent years with Argentine goalkeeper Paulo Gazzaniga and Czech stopper Tomas Holy both progressing well despite communication issues early on in their careers.
Hurtado was taking three English lessons a week at Watford and will continue online learning while at the Gills. He’ll no doubt pick plenty up along the way but will be looking to let the football do the talking during his temporary stay at Gillingham.
Clemence said: “He is trying hard at it and he understands more than he can speak. He will be fine, we’ll look after him.
“We have so much computer software now where you can animate different things, we have top analysts here at the football club and I think there will be a few animations going on, showing where we want him to run and close down and in what areas, there will have to be a bit of that going on but when he is on the pitch he just has to do what he does because I thought he looked quite impressive at times.”
Hurtado came off the bench on Saturday for his debut.
“He was lively,” continued the Gills head coach. “You can see he has that South American style where he is going to go, which way he is going to go, he has a nice feel for the ball.
“I think the fans warmed to him once they saw him have a couple of touches and I thought he did ever so well when he came on, it was nice to give him his debut.
“We managed to watch a bit of him (before he signed) and we felt it was worth the chance to take. He is young and can he come in here and bring a little bit of difference? I think we have seen already he is definitely something a little different to what we have got.
“He is a South American playing for Gillingham. The fans should be excited. Hopefully he will do well for us, his work-rate was exceptional.”
