Wales fans have shown their support for Ben Davies after the footballer received a torrent of criticism for speaking Welsh during an interview. The Tottenham defender made World Cup history recently by conducting a first ever press conference at the tournament in Welsh ahead of Cymru's game against USA.
In his latest appearance on BBC over the weekend, the 29-year-old once again carried out an interview in the Welsh language ahead of his team's highly anticipated match against England on Tuesday evening. After the Neath-born defender's interview however, there was a flurry of negative comments on social media, with some saying it was a "waste of time" and others asking: "Why can't Ben Davies just speak English, he plays for Spurs."
But many of the Cymru fans were quick to defend Ben Davies and the Welsh language on social media. Welsh DJ Katie Owen argued that his decision to speak Welsh during an interview was "not that deep". On Twitter, she wrote: "Everyone tweeting moaning about Ben Davies speaking Welsh, I was at the press conference, there are Welsh language television channels here and they asked him questions in Welsh so he responded in Welsh. It’s not that deep".
Read more: Gary Lineker speaks Welsh on BBC's live TV coverage of World Cup
Later on, she added: "I honestly can’t see the problem with a player answering questions in their mother tongue anyway. Shouldn’t even be having to tweet this. Ridiculous".
Andrew Neath tweeted: "Just spent five minutes reading through the utter meltdown some are having (again) because Ben Davies spoke Welsh in an interview. Why are some so triggered by hearing the Welsh language?"
Twitter user called Jordan said: "Crazy how a country can’t wrap its head around a Welshman speaking his own language. If Ben Davies chooses to speak in Welsh, good on him I say. He’s a proud Welshman wanting to speak his language. Like most countries at the World Cup, they don’t always need to speak English."
Calum Higgins wrote: "The oppressive attitude to the Welsh Language is shown by the reaction to Ben Davies’ Welsh Lang interview. If he’d done it in French he’d be lauded as a genius multilingual footballer, instead he spoke the language of our country and got abuse."
While Joel Heritage had this to say: "I'm a big fan of Ben Davies doing all his interviews in Welsh, I can't lie. Having somebody representing the Welsh language is of huge importance."
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