Diniyar Bilyaletdinov picks up rhythm of the Mersey beat

Everton's Russian winger has had to get to grips with the Scouse accent and the faster game of the Premier League

Saturday November 28, 2009 | Daniel Taylor | The Guardian

When Diniyar Bilyaletdinov comes into one of the slightly outdated lounges beneath the old yet still charming Main Stand at Goodison Park he is accompanied by his interpreter, Yelena, and is quick to apologise for not having the confidence to try speaking in English. Then the questions start and the man with the Premier League's most unpronounceable surname forgets himself and instinctively replies in his new language.

He has been having weekly lessons since his £10m move from Lokomotiv Moscow in August and is now proficient enough to hold the basics of a conversation, particularly if it includes such important phrases as "man on" or "offside". After a few weeks of puzzlement, he can also now appreciate the billboard that Everton have put up behind the Stanley Park End to celebrate his acquisition. "I've travelled 1,620 miles to play here," it says beneath a picture of the player who arrived at Goodison on the back of a personal recommendation from Guus Hiddink, Russia's national manager.

So what has he learned from his first three months on Merseyside? First things first, he has been here long enough now to realise that, in Liverpool, they have their own language and it is known as Scouse. "It is not the words that cause the problem," he says, "it's the accent." But he is slowly getting the hang of it and, as you might expect, enough people have drilled him about the importance of tomorrow's local hostilities for him to realise that, to Evertonians, the derby against Liverpool is the biggest game of the season. "In Moscow it's very different," he says. "When the Moscow teams play each other the build-up starts a few days before; here, they seem to talk about this game all year round."

He has come to realise that the game he watched on television in Moscow in February, anguished about having missed out on a mid-season move to Everton and wondering what might have been when Dan Gosling's stoppage-time goal eliminated Liverpool from the FA Cup, is already chiselled into club lore. Then there has been the crash course in what is known, in the law of the dressing room, as banter – and the old rule that when a player comes from abroad they need more than just a nice first touch to be accepted fully.

Bilyaletdinov found this out the hard way when his new team-mates arranged a night out in Manchester recently. "I was at home dressed to leave," he recalls."The usual kind of thing – jeans, T-shirt – and then my phone rang. It was Phil Neville, and he said, 'Don't forget to put on your team suit'. I was surprised but he said, 'I just wanted to let you know we always wear our suits when we go out as a team'.

"This was the captain talking – he had a serious voice, you know, and I just thought, 'Oh God…' I was running late, in a state of panic. My shirt was not even ironed, but my girlfriend, Masha, helped while I quickly got changed. So I was all smart. Nice suit, ironed shirt, tie, polished shoes. Then I got to the restaurant and everyone was in their jeans and, yes, everyone found it very funny. Nice joke."

He is an undemonstrative type, quietly spoken, dressed in black, straightforward haircut – typical, you could say, of many Muscovites. But there is a sense of fun behind that poker face. He has already promised to sing as some kind of initiation ceremony at the players' Christmas party and, when Neville wasn't looking, Bilyaletdinov took the captain's jacket and scraped the contents of his plate into the inside pocket. "I have a sense of humour too," he smiles. Fifteen-all.

Bilyaletdinov grew up in a sporting family of Tatar descent – his father, Renit, having a 15-year career with four clubs in Russia's top two divisions, including the Lokomotiv side that his son went on to represent 150 times. Renit is now the reserve-team manager at the Lokomotiv Stadium, while his other son, Marat, at 25 a year older than Diniyar, is a midfielder for SAC Moscow.

The younger of the two siblings grew up as a long-distance supporter of Arsenal, though not a fully paid-up member of the In-Arsène-We-Trust foundation, commenting almost out of the blue that, "I always liked Arsenal because of the way they used to play, but in recent years, no, I think they have lost something in the way they play."

Enrolled at a specialist football school, the young Bilyaletdinov was primed for this career from an early age. Yet he also combined his early years at Lokomotiv with studying for an engineering degree at the Moscow State Industrial University, where he wrote a thesis on the workings of juggernauts. "I have always been interested in the design of cars and other vehicles," he says. "It's a passion of mine; what goes into them, what makes them run so fast. That's what I would be doing now if I had taken another career."

But football was his true speciality. Bilyaletdinov was in the Lokomotiv side at the age of 19, he won the first of his 32 Russia caps a year later and had been captaining his club for three seasons when he first got the opportunity to move to Everton in the January transfer window.

"I remember Guus Hiddink telling me that Everton were one of the clubs who had impressed him the most when he was managing Chelsea. He said it would be good for the development of my career and that Everton were a team, first and foremost, who wanted to play good football and get results. I know David Moyes rang him, too, to ask him what he thought of me."

The transfer collapsed in January, but was resurrected in the wake of Everton banking £24m from Manchester City for Joleon Lescott. Bilyaletdinov spoke again to Hiddink and two other Russians with experience of the Premier League, Roman Pavlyuchenko at Tottenham Hotspur and the new Chelsea signing Yuri Zhirkov – though not, curiously, Andrey Arshavin of Arsenal. "No," he says. "He is not my friend and I didn't speak with him." He does not elaborate.

The suspicion in Russia – where, incidentally, Everton already have a supporters' website called Russian Toffees – was that Bilyaletdinov might be too lightweight for English football, but the answer to that can probably be gauged by the fact that his next appointment after this interview, on Thursday, was a lunch to collect Everton's player-of-the-month award for October.

"It's very fast," he says. "The mileage is probably the same, but the speed is different. And there is more of this [he taps his head]. You need more concentration and attention. Every game is a hard game – not exactly like being in a washing machine, but something along those lines."

In his understated way, he gives the impression that he is enjoying it – though it has not been the exact experience he had imagined. For starters, Everton have one win in 10 games, falling to 14th in the table. Bilyaletdinov has scored twice in three Premier League starts, but he was also shown a red card in the last of them, for a foul on Stilian Petrov, the Aston Villa midfielder. "It was not malicious. I was really disappointed and upset about it, because I was banned for three matches just as I felt that I was doing well."

The disappointments continued when he went away to play for Russia in their World Cup qualifier against Slovenia and, having scored twice in the 2-1 first-leg win, was part of the side that lost 1-0 in Maribor to go out on away goals. "It was a tragedy for everyone in Russia. When you think of the number of football fans in my country, and they were all looking forward to us getting to the World Cup."

So Bilyaletdinov, one imagines, is bursting to get a few things out of his system now his ban has expired. "Everyone has told me that Liverpool is the biggest match in every season. The players, the staff, the fans who come to watch us train, they have all told me what to expect. And a victory will be psychological. It will help to relieve the pressure, especially being against Liverpool."

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