"Who needs Rodriguez, we've got your back 4" cracked me up after those 2 Everton own goals at St Mary's.
I am easily pleased, and still smile at every rendition of “duh duh duhduhduhduh...****ing Useless!!!” Obvious one from the promotion years = “Rickie Lambert, Southampton’s goal machine”, Always enjoyed “Steeeeeeve” aimed at DeRidder, even though it sounded like he was being booed. Best That’s Quite Funny You Bastards moment was Chelsea singing “you’ve had your day out, now **** off home” when we were looking well beaten.
I quite liked the come back the first time to Chelsea when they sang "we know who we are, champions of Europe, we know who we are", to which we replied "You'll never win that, Johnstone's Paint Trophy, you'll never win that". If I recall, it even got a round of applause from the Chelsea fans.
One of the best non Saints ones I've read about was at a match between Barnet and Brentford (both the bees) and when Brentford took the lead they sang '1-0, to the real bees'. To which the Barnet fans replied with: 'Red and white bees, you're having a laugh!'
Many of these posts make Pompey's point. The chants that are genuinely funny are one-offs. That Everton chant is one I truly loved - especially as I was travelling home with two Evertonians - but it is a once only song. On the general point, all teams have a set of go-to songs, but ours do seem limited. We are not alone here, but Man U must have a song writer. They seem to have songs that last longer than the match.
United undoubtedly are the best in the country for their variety and originality. Got loads of good songs.
They do - I remember seeing a documentary that looked at it one time. The writer/writers come up with some new ones and take them to away matches, try them in the pubs before the games, see which ones catch on. they then have a core group who can sing them at the away match and the rest of the away fans pick it up and join in, meaning 3000 or so now know it..... repeat at next away game and before long lots of others have seen it on TV. Much easier to get new songs going at away games than home games
Yes they are all mostly boring, which is good. Because the ones that aren't, are cringe-y. Every once in a while you get a good one, sometimes even brilliant. But it doesn't make up for the other 99%. I don't really care. We mostly don't do this stuff in the US, and sporting events are far different. I think if you enjoy the atmosphere of English/European football then you also have deal with the fact that it comes with ****ty chants. And also that some people are going to take it too far and say something racist or whatever, and there's going to be the occasional fight and the rare serious injury. But the games are more fun that way. It wouldn't be the same without lame chants. Watching the faux-ultra US fans at MLS or lesser leagues here is just painful. Everyone is trying way too hard. When you see a game at St. Mary's or any other stadium, it's not like John Lennon and Paul McCartney are in the stands writing brilliant songs. It's just regular people who aren't too clever, or good at singing, just singing stuff they know. But the emotion is real. It's spontaneous, and spontaneous usually means not that clever. In the US, they try to plan this **** out. Like here's what we're going to say, and let's all plan ahead for six weeks to devise the most elaborate tifo possible, and we're going to sing this song and that team will be our rivals. There is no reason why anyone should feel so strongly about say, FC Cincinnati. They've been in MLS one year. No one grew up watching FC Cincinnati, and they weren't taken to games as kids by their dads who grew up watching FC Cincinnati. There's no club legends, or stories of how the team lifted up the city spirits back in World War 2, or whatever. Of course it's not anyone's fault that they don't have a historic football club to cheer for, and they're trying very hard to create a club like that for future fans I guess. But in the meantime it's very painful to see people behaving like idiots because they think that's the way that people behave in Europe. They're like a bad caricature of football supporters which is inevitable when you fake it. Everything about pretty much every Saints chants is stupid. Even "When the Saints Go Marching In" because a bunch of English, predominantly white dudes singing an traditional African-American spiritual strongly associated with jazz and New Orleans makes no sense. There's teams named "Saints" all over the world, and they all use this song. There's also ten zillion teams that are red and white... so that makes all those chants boring and unoriginal. I mean, if you weren't actually Saints supporters and you heard people changing this stuff, you'd find it rather embarrassing, as I do. But since you are Saints supporters, you just embrace the stupidity even knowing it's stupid because it's YOUR stupidity. That's the magic. **** that is 100%, undeniably lame becomes sort of cool to temporarily because 40k fans simultaneously will it to be so. For me, I'm too far distant from Saints to embrace the stupidity of those chants. But, I can still enjoy them a bit because I can embrace your stupidity in embracing the stupidity of the chants. I'm like a Saints fan once-removed, which is all that is really appropriate for someone from the US. Like it would be weird if I cared about Saints as much as you do. Or if you cared about the Chicago Cubs as much as I do.
I was at a pre-season match between Bournemouth & Bradford a good few seasons ago. The typical pre-match quiet of such an occasion was interrupted by a lone Bradford supporter who sang Tainted Love in almost its entirety as the game kicked off. It’s easy to see an association between the lyrics to that song and the life of a long suffering football fan. Sadly no video footage of the supporters version
