Nani, Eder, Zico and Pele - sign here

Football players, soccer to those of you reading this on the other side of the Atlantic, are often accused of being, well, thick. You don't have to search too hard to find stories that would make you scratch your head in dismay at the behaviour of a so-called professional sportsman (professional footballers are almost exclusively men) earning big money to ply his trade for an hour and half a week, such as this, this, this or this.

But then something got me thinking that this might not be as generalisable a truth as it seems.

For example what about the following famous footballers?
Edson Arantes do Nascimento
Arthur Antunes Coimbra
Luís Carlos Almeida da Cunha
Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite
Éder Aleixo de Assis

They have all done something that the average footballer has not. They have figured out that when you are knackered tired after a hard training session, or trying desperately to get out of the stadium after an exhausting game past the hordes of fans scrambling for your autograph, the last thing you want to have to do is write our your quadruple-barrelled name 50 times.

Solution?

Come up with a four-letter alternative (not one of those four-letter words however) and call yourself that.

Time saved, money saved and much easier to remember.

Gosh those lads are clever.