English Premier League club Manchester City will be able to reach 80 per cent of the world’s Internet population in more than 160 countries as it launches what it claims to be the broadest multilingual website offering in football.

Manchester City’s official website was previously only offered in English, Arabic, and Mandarin Chinese. The first translation of the website was into Arabic, which was launched in 2010, two years after the club was purchased by the Abu Dhabi United Group. Now, the club can also connect with fans who speak Traditional Chinese, French, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai. The website has been localised so that fans will automatically be directed to their countries’ native language website.

Speaking to the club website, Manchester City CEO, Ferran Soriano, said: “Manchester City’s popularity and global fan base is growing at a fast pace.”

“We want to talk to our fans and friends in their own language to engage with them in new ways. We are very proud of this initiative.”

Diego Gigliani, Director of Marketing, Media & Fan Development for Manchester City, added: “With the launch of our new multilingual sites, we are creating an online home for all our international fans.”

“We hope that, by reading news and watching videos direct from the official source and in their native language, they will feel closer to the club they love.”

There are a large number of football fans in Asia, with UKTI Trade Adviser Neil Wynn-Jones stating, “Football is effectively the a national sport in these countries… but not local football, English Premier League football. It’s a great cultural thing. You’re going to need to know about football if you’re going to do business out there.”

Vietnam demonstrated their love of the sport this past week when Arsenal fan Vu Xuan Tien ran alongside the team’s bus for 5 miles, simply hoping to catch a glimpse of his heroes. Once they noticed his determination, they let him on board to meet the team. The club currently only offers their official website in three foreign languages, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Maybe ‘The Running Man’ will inspire them to translate their online presence for the Vietnamese fanbase,

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