Last month a North African coach gave a post-match press conference in Arabic that contained the most direct critique of European refereeing in recent memory. The European press did not cover it. Not because they disagreed. Because they did not hear it.
The English-language wire services condensed three sentences. The condensation removed the argument. The argument was about the structural relationship between top European clubs and the body that selects officials for continental matches. The argument named specific procedures. The argument cited specific recent decisions.
In the original Arabic, it was a coherent, evidence-based, twenty-minute argument. In English, it was a brief complaint about a single decision.
The English version was then debated as a brief complaint. The actual argument never entered the discourse.
This is what the interpreter problem produces in practice. A serious analytical contribution from a North African football figure gets reduced to a quotable line and a misleading framing. The line gets refuted. The framing gets dismissed. The substance, which was real, never reaches the audience that would have had to engage with it.
Multiply this incident across the past twenty years. That is how much non-European football analysis has been lost to the language gap. Most of it was good. Most of it would have changed the conversation if it had been heard.
The conversation it would have changed is the conversation about why the press conference itself was given. The conversation is still happening without it.