Oliver Giroud: Why France striker 'pretended he didn't speak English' at World Cup | OneFootball

France striker Oliver Giroud has been accused of bizarrely pretending he couldn’t speak English in order to get out of a shirt swap at the World Cup – despite previously playing in the Premier League for close to a decade.

The 36-year-old frontman now plays his club football at AC Milan, but spent five-and-half seasons with Arsenal between 2012 and 2018, before moving across London for a stint with Chelsea.

The four-time FA Cup winner conducted numerous English language interviews over that period – he most definitely speaks the lingo!

However, when Australia striker Jason Cummings approached him about a potential shirt trade in Qatar after the two countries met in the group stages, Giroud seemingly dodged the request by pretending not to understand the question.

It was a rough night for Cummings, who came off the bench for the final 34 minutes of the Socceroos’ 4-1 defeat to Les Bleus.

Not only was his country put to the sword in comprehensive fashion – with Giroud scoring twice – but he also suffered a number of brutal rejections when he tried to exchange shirts with some French superstars.

“After the France game, I actually tried to get Mbappe – forget Giroud, I went for the top boy Mbappe – and he told me to meet him in the changing rooms,” he explained to Australian Channel 10 show The Project.

“So I went to the changing room and the kit man was there and I gave him my top and 10 minutes later he came out with my jersey and says: ‘Nah, absolutely not, (Mbappe) doesn’t want to swap’.”

Naturally disappointing, but at least the Central Coast Mariners player got a response.

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Cummings continued: “So when I was walking back to my changing room and I’ve seen Giroud and I’m walking, as handsome as ever, and I asked him, ‘Giroud, please man, can I get your shirt, man? I’m a big fan, can I get your shirt’.

“And he just walked past me, pretended he never spoke English! And he’s been in the Premier League for 10 years! He just walked right past me!”

You can check out a clip of the former Hearts man telling his story of being snubbed in the clip below (at 4:32).

Giroud responds to jersey swap criticism

After Cummings’ story emerged, Giroud hit back on Thursday morning by posting an image of Australian midfielder Jackson Irvine’s shirt from the match in question, quipping: ‘Hi @jacksonirvine_ How is my English mate?’.

Even though Giroud had likely already arranged a shirt swap with the St. Pauli man, it was still pretty cheeky of him to make out he couldn’t speak English when approached by Cummings!

The tale did eventually have a positive ending as Cummings revealed on Instagram that he had been successful in securing the shirt of one of France’s World Cup stars.

“I did get [Jules] Kounde’s [shirt] and he was a great bloke,” the 27-year-old told his 103,000 followers on the social media platform.