We've definitely done this before, but I can't find it for searching, so with apologies, I'd like to re-start.

Steaua - it is "stair-wa", not "Stoy-ya", as Sky were going back to this week?

Cruzeiro - is it "cruise-air-oh,", or "cruise-ear-oh" (or something else again)? Similarly "Mineiro"?

Barca (the shortened common form of Barcelona) - is it "Barse-ah", as I'd assumed, not "Barker", as I heard one pundit saying?

Barca is like you say "Barse-ah".

Cruzeiro would be something like "Cruise-ay-roh",with the R's pronounced as in French.

I'll leave Steaua to ad hoc, but I think it should be something like "steh-ah-wa".

Steaua's the acme of this. "Am I a sophisticated commentator on European football? Yes I am, because I can pronounce "Steaua" properly."

Well, it's all I can hang my credibility on, anyway.

Well, it isn't, because you're asking how it's pronounced.

It's pronounced stee-WAH!!

stee-WAH!! stee-WAH!! stee-WAH!!

stee-WAH!!

Not really though.

Don't put your hopes on me though. I speak as much Romanian as John Motson.

I once heard Setubal pronounced as "Stewball" when i would say it is "set you bal" but then again I stumble across my own language at times!

QUOTE:
Cruzeiro - is it "cruise-air-oh,", or "cruise-ear-oh" (or something else again)?

When I watched them (at a summer friendly in Madrid against Atletico in the 70s), me and the Da sang "come on the wee Crues" throughout. Mind you, I was only 14 and pissed as a cnut- we were sharing those leather flagons of rot-gut with the locals.

It's a tricky area to get into, and I hate the way it has bled into English football, with the whole NooCASSull thing. How long before Sky Sports News start talking about Brizzol City?

Incidentally, when did it stop being Stoya?

More or less what IWU said. I'd go with steh-ow-wa as the best way I can render it without the IPA.

Barça is made complex by the fact that if you leave off the cedilla from the c (and lets' face it if you're using an English keyboard, who has the time to faff about with charmap), it really ought to be pronounced barka. The cedilla makes the c into an s sound. So what happens is that someone lazy leaves off the ceilla and then the resultant word is picked up by someone who speaks a little Spanish who thinks, "hang on surely that should be "barka", and the other commentators must be wrong")

ad hoc wrote:

QUOTE:
Barça is made complex by the fact that if you leave off the cedilla from the c (and lets' face it if you're using an English keyboard, who has the time to faff about with charmap), it really ought to be pronounced barka. The cedilla makes the c into an s sound. So what happens is that someone lazy leaves off the ceilla and then the resultant word is picked up by someone who speaks a little Spanish who thinks, "hang on surely that should be "barka", and the other commentators must be wrong")

Perhaps, but only if you pronounced it Barkelona, surely?

Are clubs called Red Star Something (Belgrade, Saint-Ouen etc.) actually called Red Star in English? Or does that bit get translated?

You're more likely to get Rot Weiss or Unter den Linden than Crvena Zvezda or Krasnaya Plozhad. Partly due to past cultural links, but also that British English speakers tend to find German names easier to pronounce than Slavonic.

I don't understand? They're certainly called "Red Star" in English, but are called, for example, "Crvena Zvezda" in Serbian?

Ah, I see. Are they called by a translated name in English? It depends. "Red Star" are, for sure. But as said above, we don't say "Red-White" Essen. It is a funny one, that. We say "Bayern Munich", for example, which is odd, given that should either be "Bayern Munchen" (with umlauts abounding) or "Bavarian Munich", not a hybrid of the two.

Sorry, I meant we (Brits) are more likely to use original German names, while translating Russian/ Serbian ones.

The original and official name of Red Star 93 (aka Red Star Paris/St. Ouen, etc.) is "Red Star" and they would be very upset to be called Etoile Rouge. See also "Young Boys" (not Knaben or Juengen) and "Grasshopper Club" in Switzerland.

The same went for White Star in Belgium.

The German and former Eastern Bloc teams have virtually all translated "Red Star" etc into their native language (I can't think of any other than Bohemians (Praha, both the new and ersatz versions) that use English names off the top of my head, but there are probably a few somewhere).

And yes, English usage is not consistent in this respect.