FC Lyn Oslo v Liverpool - Pre Season Friendly - Bislett Stadium, Oslo, Norway - 09/10 - 5/8/09 Liverpool fans © Action Images
We all know how important the crowd is to a team. They can inspire the team to play better; some managers even call the supporters their ‘12th player’. When they feel the team is playing badly, however, they will always let the players and manager know! But what exactly do the fans sing and chant when we hear them during a match?
The Barclays Premier League is home to the funniest, most musical, most passionate, and often, rudest chants in the world of football. While in most countries fans only chant about their own and other teams, in British football there are also crowd songs about individual players, managers, past victories and parts of the country.
Although each club’s fans have their own chants about their teams, there are some common songs which are shared by all teams.
‘We’re by far the greatest team,
The world has ever seen!’,
for example, is sung by fans of teams even at the bottom of the lowest division, all in complete seriousness! It’s not all serious though: when a team has a good period of play on the pitch, the crowd will often begin to sing, ‘It’s just like watching Brazil!’ Probably the most famous of all is Liverpool’s ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ which is internationally famous.
The chants against the opposing team are just as amusing. ‘You’re so ‘bad’, it’s unbelievable!’, ‘You’re supposed to be a big team!’, and ‘ Are you (name of very bad team) in disguise?’ are all sung around Premiership grounds when the opposition is playing badly. When a team concedes a goal, the supporters will often fall silent, which leads to the other team’s fans chanting ‘You’re not singing any more!’, soon followed by, ‘You only sing when you’re winning!’ Except in Grimsby. In this famous fishing port in the north of England, opposing fans will chant ‘You only sing when you’re fishing’ when the Grimsby fans are quiet.
The chants about individual players are usually the most interesting and amusing. Each club’s supporters will have at least one song for their favourite players in the team &-8211; some just the player’s name put to a tune, as with ‘Steve Gerrard, Gerrard’; some using a familiar pattern, like ‘There’s only one Michael Owen, one Michael Owen!’; but many with quite individual words and several verses.
When Ryan Giggs of Manchester United is playing well, the crowd will either sing ‘Giggs, Giggs will tear you apart again’, to the tune of the Joy Division song ‘Love will tear us apart’, or this longer chant, to the tune of the Robin Hood song:
‘Ryan Giggs, Ryan Giggs, running down the wing,
Ryan Giggs, Ryan Giggs, hear United sing.
Feared by the Blues,
Loved by the Reds,
Ryan Giggs, Ryan Giggs, Ryan Giggs.
There is also a new chant about Park Jisung:
‘Dont sell my park
My Ji-sung Park
I just don’t think
He’ll understand
And if you sell my park
My Ji-sung Park
He might write a book like Jaap Stam.’
Many teams’ supporters have even got chants for their manager. Again, these can follow a common pattern: ‘Ferguson’s red and white army!’ at Manchester United, or ‘Arsene Wenger’s red and white army!’ sung by Arsenal fans. However, some managers inspire as much love as the star players. When Kevin Keegan was Newcastle manager, the Toon Army (i.e. Newcastle fans) sang a whole song using most of the words of ‘Winter Wonderland’, but singing ‘We’re walking in a Keegan Wonderland!’
So where do these chants come from, and how do the fans all learn a new chant around the ground at the same time? The answer is: a whole variety of places. Many club songs have been sung for seasons and are repeated year after year, maybe with small variations as players, managers or results change. When a new chant starts at one club, it will often be copied by visiting supporters and applied to their team the following week. Another source of new chants is the fanzines (unofficial club magazines sold outside the stadium on match days), in which supporters will suggest new songs for the coming game. Many chants are also made up in pubs, on coaches and trains before a match, and sung loudly by a small group in the stadium until the rest of the crowd has learnt the words. And there is always the lone fan who will stand on his seat and sing loudly on his own, hoping that the rest of the crowd will pick up his chant and join in.
Chants are so much a part of British football that in 2004 there was even a contest to find a ‘Chant Laureate’, (like the Poet Laureate, the country’s official poetry writer), who will be paid a year’s salary to tour the stadiums of England and write new chants for different teams. It seems unlikely that fans will be interested in having a song made for them by a supporter of a rival team, but it is certainly a dream job for some &-8211; more than 1500 people entered the competition.
So next time you’re watching an English game on TV, keep your ears focused on the crowd rather than the commentators, and the next Chant Laureate could be you!
- Thom Kiddle
We embedded links in some chants for you to see video clips and hear the chants. Please note that we are not responsible for the content of any external sites.
Reading skills
Scan your eyes over the nine paragraphs very quickly. Which paragraph will tell you about:
a) the different things British teams chant about? ( Paragraph 2 )
b) an official job for inventing chants? ( Paragraph 8 )
c) songs about managers? ( Paragraph 6 )
d) songs sung about Ryan Giggs? ( Paragraph 5 )
e) who starts new chants?
Now read those paragraphs more carefully to find whether these statements are true or false.
1) Fans in most countries have songs about their favourite players. ( False )
2) The ‘Chant Laureate’ will only write songs about his own club. ( False )
3) The Arsenal manager is called Arsene Wenger. ( True )
4) Man Utd fans have more than one chant about Ryan Giggs. ( True )
5) All club songs change every season. ( False )
Can you find the word which matches the following definitions?
1) Make someone feel they can do something well. (verb, paragraph 1) ( inspire )
2) More bad language than others. (superlative adjective, paragraph 2) ( rudest )
3) Lose or give up. (verb, paragraph 4) ( concede )
4) Changes. (noun, paragraph 7) ( variations )
5) Not a good chance, not really possible. (adjective, paragraph 8) ( unlikely )
