English football chants 6/15/2017

And so this interesting subject came up because of the news of Roy Lamer, the English footballer who counter-attacked the terrorist attacks in a pub during the latest London Bridge attack. That’s three times I used ‘attack’ but can’t think of anything else at the moment. They yelled Allahu Akbar and he yelled F–you, I’m Millwall! and lived. So it appears that the Millwall football club chant is ‘You don’t like us, we don’t care!’ Which I thought was fantastic.

Words to live by

So I looked up football chants on YouTube and they are often hilarious, non-PC, sarcastic, self-deprecating and flat-out funny. Who thinks them up? How do thousands of fans all learn them and chant in unison? One losing team chanted

We lose every week

we lose every week

You’re nothing special

we lose every week.

One losing fan-crowd started chanting ‘Let’s pretend, let’s pretend, let’s pretend we scored a goal!‘ and then they all cheered as if they had scored a goal. And ‘Harry Potter, he’s coming for you!” And a non-PC one was against a player on the other team;

Adebayoooor! Adebayooor! His dad washes elephants and his mother’s a whoooore!’

(these were Tottenham fans) (I can’t believe they weren’t arrested or cleared out)

Chants about the news: ‘Jihadi John he’s f—-ing dead, they dropped a banger on his head!’ and one savage one about a player caught with a very underage girl; ‘F–k off Adam Johnson, you’re going down for noncing, you’re a peeeedophile, you’re a peeedophile…” Another one sung to the tune of Lord Of the Dance against rivals from Park,

“Park, Park, wherever you may be, eating dogs in your home country, could be worse, you could be scouse, eating rats in your council house…”

I think a ‘scouse’ is slang for somebody from Liverpool. It seemed to be cross-cultural insults.

One comment on a Youtube vid of chants answered the question of how they start;

“Many are posted on internet forums, others just startup in supporter’s pubs near the stadium, there’s hundred of melodies that fit those chants…” and of course there’s a culture of derisive chants that must be thousands of years old, just like the chastushki of Russia; spontaneous, just-thought-up rhyming insults from one group to another. And I saw on the vids that often men would turn and sing up to the fans in the seats up behind to lead them. Americans have no traditions like that, more’s the pity.

The best one; A contingent or squad of bobbies came walking along the front ground-level of the bleachers/stadium, checking on the crowd and the fans began to chant

We paid for your hats

we paid for your hats

What a waste of council tax

We paid for your hats!

But the best of all was a group of guys — called ‘football hooligans’ in the Youtube title — who began to sing Deeply Madly Truly in harmony. It was beautiful. It was a capella. They had to have practiced. One guy started out solo and then all the others fell In. It was lovely.