Hi Ulisses. Nice article. Though one should be careful when translating the word “defender” into Brazilian Portuguese, as a defender could be either a centre-back or a full-back. Since “defensor” is in my opinion not very idiomatic, the best way to translate “defender” is to do some research and find out whether the given footballer is a centre-back or a full-back.

By the way, the same applies to many positions which sometimes find no correspondence in different languages, as each football nation tends to see the game from a different perspective. For instance, whilst the “ponta” virtually died in the early Eighties in Brazil courtesy of Telê Santana, the English “winger” dropped deeper but kept the same name. Not to mention how often Brazilians see the midfield vertically (“primeiro homem”, “segundo homem”), whereas the English prefer to analyse it horizontally (“wide midfielders”, “central midfielders”).

Fascinating topic indeed 🙂