The splendid rudeness of British Football crowds

 As an indicator of quite how well I am now feeling, I have to tell you that - having been informed by my sister that tickets could be got - we went last night to watch the game between Leeds United (our team of decades standing) and Watford (which is not too far from us both).

I took this photo from the seat I was in with the Watford fans, where I felt it might be rude to punch the air each time Leeds scored one of their four goals in their 4-0 win, but no such qualms applied to the 2500 or so Leeds fans who had come the 180 miles to the game (on a Tuesday evening). In fact the photo above shows those said fans. You will see there are parts of the crowd where you can see some of the red plastic or yellow plastic seats. Well those are the Watford section. The bit where it is a solid mass of bodies is the Leeds section. We don't know the colour of their seats and everyone is standing up anyway. And singing very very loudly, and rudely, in a strong Yorkshire accent.

Now UK readers will probably know what UK football crowds are like (although if you have never watched a game, maybe that is too big an assumption). But in the US and other countries, you may be surprised. UK football crowds are wonderfully uncontrolled by anything except their emotions, and they would guffaw if an announcer told them when to start a song. And no announcer would ever tell them to start most of the songs that they do sing, because they are very rude and profane (and involve the F-word very often). But I have to say I find them lovely and uplifting, even when it is 30,000 opposition fans singing at you. 

I love them because they are the spirit of the marketplace, the commons where nobody gets to be respected because of who they are. The more noble the opposing team, the greater the vitriol (and humour). And because everyone knows all the chants, the delivery is very clear. You can even hear the accent of the town or city that they come from. I had a lovely evening at the West Brom ground (the Hawthorns) in the West Midlands of England. There is a very strong and distinctive local accent there, and when they sang - as they do - Psalm 23 (The Lord's my shepherd), you could hear in the way they said 'makes me down to lie' the lovely narrow 'loy' pronunciation that is used locally. It's like a dialect class from a multitude.

The tunes to which the chants are set are a strange mixture of pop songs and ancient melodies. Some are sung to the chorus of Bread of Heaven, but the least profane version is "We can see you, we can see you, we can see you sneaking out", when your team have clearly won and some of the opposition are making an early dash to the car parks. There are much more profane version, for example if an opposition attacker makes a hash of a shot they will often have ten thousand fans singing at them "What the ***, what the ****, what the ******* hell was that?"

There is great creativity in these crowds as well, and some of the best chants (usually to praise one of their own players) have been collected in books such as "Who are ya?" which is very good. Amazon link here: 

Who are Ya?

There is the chant that was used for the Russian player for Everton, Diniyar Bilyaletdinov.
Allegedly, they sang "He's fast, he's game, we can't pronounce his name, Russian Lad, Russian Lad!"
This song is sung to the tune of 'In the quartermaster's store', which you may have to look up. The same

tune was used for the song for the Trinidadian striker Stern John, whose song was, apparently:

"He's big, he's fast, his first name should come last, Stern John, Stern John!"

The majority of the chants are full of happy profanity and respond quickly to the turns of the game. 

There is even a very British appetite for very self-deprecating songs about your own team when they 

play badly. Those of a sensitive nature may want to avoid the following link to several of these songs, 

but for me they are the heart and joy of a British football crowd. Enjoy, if, like me, that's your thing:

Self-deprecating chants