There have been some absolute belters over the years haven’t there?
Football songs and chants have provided some brilliantly funny moments, and some not so funny ones, too, but then, football fans aren’t known for being politically correct.
The best chants are the harmless ones, the bonkers ones, and those that cleverly insult another team.
Who could forget these:
- “He’s big, he’s red, his feet stick out the bed he’s Peter Crouch” – Liverpool fans
- “Let’s pretend, let’s pretend, let’s pretend we scored a goal” – Norwich fans then go crazy
- “Are you Tottenham, Are you Tottenham, Are you Tottenham in disguise?” – Arsenal fans to anyone not laying well
I could list about 100 more here.
It’s not just about comedy and poking fun though, there are some very well known songs that serve a more serious purpose. Some clubs have anthems.
Everyone knows Liverpool’s song, You’ll Never Walk Alone, from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel, and West Ham are well known for “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles”.
Both of these songs have an emotional element to them, and they mean far more to fans of their respective clubs than they ever have to anyone else.
The question I’m interested in though, is not just why these chants and songs exist in football, but how they started in the first place?
Origins of Singing and Chanting at Football
There are records of chants and songs at football matches as early as the 1880s, although back then, they were much tamer and simpler than today.
Brass bands would play before games began to keep the crowds entertained, so people would join in with favourite songs of the day. This established the relationship between singing and football games.
They were non-confrontational and usually focussed on celebrating their own team rather than putting down the opposition. Fans might try to compete in terms of who could sing their song or chant their chant the loudest, but it was much friendlier. You wouldn’t have seen a group of men in flat caps and waistcoats gesticulating at each other across the field.
I’m talking about chants like:
- Oggy, oggy, oggy. Oi, Oi, Oi.
- Glory Glory (insert team name)
- On the Ball, City (Thought to be the oldest football song still in use, by Norwich)
- Kick Kick Kick Kick Kick It (from Chick Chick Chick Chick Chicken)
It was about creating an atmosphere and ‘supporting the lads’ rather than making anyone laugh. Some of the chants used were actually war cries taken from the various regiments in the army and repurposed for the terraces.
So the same thing was going on back then, but it looked and sounded very different than today.
We had the two world wars in this period so if you imagine the famous songs you know from back then, and the sort of team spirit that was encouraged across the whole nation, this was the general vibe on the football terraces too. Healthy competition, but nothing mean or offensive.
It wasn’t until the 1960s that fans began to get more inventive with what they were chanting.
1960s Onwards
It was around this time that songs and chants on the terraces started to develop. It was in the early 1960s that Liverpool adopted You’ll Never Walk Alone as their song, for example, and Southampton began using Oh When the Saints as theirs.
Still very tame, but more formal and meaningful with light humorous elements too.
This time period saw rapid change in what was deemed socially and culturally acceptable though, with music playing a large part in that. The old brass bands had been replaced with PA systems and the exposure to international fans who were less reserved is thought to be another reason why English fans and their chants changed so dramatically in this time.
Before long we had entered the era of football firms and violence, and the chants and songs heard from the terraces began to reflect that. The songs that had the most meaning remained, but the harmless cheering had been replaced by insults and mockery.
Over time, other teams could even use a rival’s own songs to mock them. Going back to Liverpool, the lyrics to their song are:
“Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart, and you’ll never walk alone.”
However, rival fans have been known to mock scousers for their – unfair and outdated – reputation as workshy scroungers, by adapting those lyrics to:
“Sign on, sign on, with a pen in your hand, and you’ll never work again.”
Obviously, this is a dig suggesting they are all living on benefits, which is ridiculous if you have seen the price of tickets at Anfield, but it’s funny nonetheless.
A lot of the chants we still hear today stick to tunes and melodies used back in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, but the words are changed to suit whatever or whoever the fans want to sing about.
Today
The football songs and chants of today are, in my humble opinion the best they have ever been.
The idea of football fans singing has even been used in advertising campaigns like this legendary effort:
“Be evryfin dat u neeeeedd!” Terrifying and beautiful all at the same time.
We have thankfully moved on from the violence and nastiness of the 70s, 80s and 90s, but the lessons learned by fans have not been forgotten when it comes to winding up the opposition.
We seem to be in a golden era of sarcasm and insults, whereby the things fans chant are merciless but they tend to be funny and a bit clever rather than just plain nasty.
That said, when Adam Johnson was convicted of child grooming in 2016 fans were ready with some pretty raw chants about that, and Leeds fans got plenty of abuse from opposition fans after it all came out about Jimmy Savile.
For the most part though, songs and chants tread the line between grossly offensive and funny but brutal quite well. A good example of a chant that goes just far enough is this one sung at Chelsea fans after their captain had been caught having an affair with a teammate’s wife:
“Chelsea, wherever you may be, keep your wife from John Terry”
From picking out a steward who looks like Boris Johnson and picking on a player for their haircut, to mocking a specific opposition fan who has a slightly dodgy dress sense and cheering for an inflatable penis (it happened), chants can be wonderfully spontaneous. Others can be clearly targeted, such as when Manchester United fans chanted, “Jamie Vardy, your wife’s a grass” after the whole scandal between her and Colleen Rooney came out.
Here’s another video of some of the most brutal chants:
The fact that Americans are reacting to the chants makes the video twice as funny if you ask me, but it shows a good mix of the silly, the funny, and the probably went too far!
One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is how often a popular song is adapted to fit the name of a player or something like that. West Ham fans had a good one for Bobby Zamora that went, “When you’re sat in row Z, and the ball hits your head, that’s Zamora” to the tune of That’s Amore.
This is another staple feature of football songs today.
The Religious Similarities
The similarities between football and religion are often commented upon, and terrace chants and songs are another area where the two intersect.
Look at the image above. Swap those clothes for football shirts and you’ve got fans singing a chant rather than Christians singing a hymn.
Football has been described as a religion by more than a few prominent figures in the game and plenty more fans. The way in which many fans think about and behave around matters involving their club is very similar to religious fanatics.
This is also an area where singing as a group is popular, and it goes back a long way.
Communal singing has been used as a way to develop social cohesion, express a shared identity, lament, celebrate, remember, and much more for over 100,000 years. It is thought to have begun when we still lived in tribes (you could argue that football clubs are more or less the same thing as a tribe), and developed as time went on to serve different purposes.
What do Christians do in Church services? They sing. During the Shabbat what do Jewish communities do? They sing. Chanting is an alternative in some religions, such as Buddhism, where sacred texts and mantras are chanted as one to create a collective mindfulness.
Alright, a church congregation singing a hymn is a bit different from 40,000 Chelsea fans chanting “The referee’s a wanker”, but what is going on underneath the words is the same. A group of people united in the moment for a specific purpose or cause.