Emerson Palmieri: 'I couldn't understand Moyes' Scottish accent!'

This season has been a learning curve for Emerson Palmieri. Not just because West Ham have spent most the season battling against relegation - although that is a new one for the highly-decorated Italy international.

No, the biggest culture shift for Palmieri was trying to get to grips David Moyes’ Glaswegian accent.

“I couldn’t understand the coach very well when I moved here because of his accent,” he smiles. “That was a bit difficult, but now it’s all good.”

Things are all good now, with West Ham playing in the Europa Conference League final, yet for large parts of the season things were looking far less rosy.

This is the first time that Palmieri, who signed from Chelsea last summer, has had to deal with a relegation battle. And the 28-year-old insists it is not an experience that he wants to go through again.

“Well, that was complicated,” Palmieri admits. “I’ve been lucky to have always been part of teams who usually fought for Champions League and Europa League spots or even to win the title.

“So I had never found myself in this situation and I remember looking and all of the sudden realising, ‘The relegation is getting too close.’ It was not an easy thing to handle because this pressure takes all your energy – you go home and can’t stop thinking about it.

“But it was not just me, no one at the team was used to this – West Ham have always secured a top 10 spot in the past years. But even in that situation the coach has always told us that both competitions were important and that winning a trophy would mean a lot for us. So we never had to prioritise one of them.

“We knew that we had a great group. If you look at the players we have, it’s a very good team, but for some reason things weren’t clicking, luck was not on your side either. But we have always maintained that we couldn’t give up. Then perhaps the turning point for us came when we faced Manchester United and beat them 1-0. If it were another team, maybe players would have thought, ‘That’s United, we have no chance.’ But even though we were before a rival fighting for the Champions League, we believed in ourselves.”

Having been described by Moyes as a player who “can score goals, is good at defending, good on the ball and that gives you what you want,” Palmieri could not be happier in east London now - particularly if they can deliver a historic trophy against Fiorentina in Prague on Wednesday.

It has been a dramatic few weeks for the Conference League, with West Ham’s semi-final win against AZ Alkmaar marred by crowd violence.

Jarrod Bowen this week told how he was moved to intervene when Duth hooligans attempted to storm the away end where his grandfather was sitting and today, Palmieri backs up his team-mate’s insistence that the players had to intervene.

“Watching their supporters coming after elderly people and children, we felt it was only right that we did something to defend them,” he added.

“It was not a fair fight, something we could just look at and let happen. Obviously, nobody likes situations like that or supports violence, but we had to go there.

“When [David] Moyes got to the dressing room afterwards, he immediately asked if everybody was OK, if there was anyone hurt. Fortunately, we were all well. So then he congratulated us and we could properly celebrate the win. In the end, those sad scenes have brought us even closer now as a team.”

Video footage of West Ham fan Chris Knoll fighting off the hooligans as terrified supporters stood in the background was one the defining sights of the match and Palmieri became the latest player to pay tribute to the man dubbed the ‘Angel of Alkmaar’.

“Of course, we will want to win it for him too,” Emerson Palmieri tells Telegraph Sport.

“Nobody enjoyed what happened there [in Alkmaar], but we always try to look on the bright side of things and, by going down from his place to defend the families, it really felt like he [Knollsy] was representing thousands of West Ham fans. Thilo Kehrer’s girlfriend was sitting just behind him, so you see that it was mostly women and children in that area.

“You have to acknowledge all his bravery to do that because he wasn’t fighting just two or three guys, but a bunch of ultras and he wasn’t scared. So that was really special what he did, he truly represented all the fans.”

Palmieri was not playing that night but insists the terror has brought fans and players closer together. “When we got to Alkmaar, the night before the game these fans set off fireworks outside our hotel and didn’t let us sleep, so this whole atmosphere began there,” he adds.

“After we booked our place in the final, we saw him [Knoll] and perhaps some other guy fighting on their own with all those people. It was then that we thought, ‘Wait, we have to do something here, they’re alone there.’ That was the time when we started jumping the dugout to help them. It was players and fans getting together that moment,” Palmieri recalls.

Having featured in seven games during West Ham’s run to the Conference League final, Palmieri will be hoping to become the first footballer to complete the set of UEFA club and international winner’s medals.

The 28-year-old has already won the trophies of the Champions League, Europa League and Super Cup with Chelsea and the Euros with Italy.

“To be honest, I really never thought about playing at this level for so many big clubs, winning those titles. It just felt like a reality too far away for someone who grew up in Brazil, like something unreal, that you couldn’t achieve. When I moved to Europe [in 2014], I joined Palermo, who had just been promoted to the Serie A in Italy, so even then it felt far away, but look at me now. You always need to believe and work hard,” Palmieri says.