As the 2020/21 Premier League season draws to a close this month, we can reflect on all the differences this season has brought to the country’s most-loved sport. However, the difference I am most interested in, is the lack of live chants and music inside the stadia for the majority of the season. Of course, the alternative of virtual chants and shouts helped to create some sort of atmosphere for the matches, but it still hasn’t been the same, as shown by the lack of clear home advantages in results this year. As well as not being able to affect the football played in matches, the lack of chants has also prevented any social and cultural meanings from emerging in live football. Though not obvious at first glance, the effects of football chants on society as well as the football match, are very important and this article takes a deeper look at some of them.
Effects of Chants within Football
As with any performance, it is important to consider football chants in context. Chants are heard before, during and after matches, both inside and outside the stadium. By the 1960s chants had become an integral part of football and were “arguably the most essential ingredients of the average football fan’s matchday experience” (Adrian Thrills). First I’ll look at the effects the chants have on fans, players and more recently stadium design.
The fans themselves are most affected by the chants since they are the ones performing them. Chanting creates an intimidating atmosphere for the opposition by focusing on their weaknesses, while motivating and encouraging their own team through praise of players or team. Sometimes chants are employed as a call and response. This occasionally happens between fans of the same side from different parts of the ground, however mostly this occurs between opposing fans. For example, You’re not singing anymore, sung to the hymn tune Bread of Heaven is often directed at a team that has just conceded a goal. This can elicit various responses, perhaps the most popular of which is You only sing when you’re winning, sung to the tune of the song Guantanamera. This is occasionally adapted to variations like You only sing when you’re farming (for Ipswich Town, known as the tractor boys). Whatever the song, what matters most to the fans is that chants are actually happening. As Sociology Professor Les Back said, “Experiencing football as a fan was always as much about the sounds of the stadium as the visual exhibition of the game itself” and one fan went as far to say that “a football match without singing…is what the cinema must have been like before they invented talkies. It must never happen” (Thrills). However, unfortunately that is what has happened for most of this season.
The chants also affect the players. Sometimes these effects are positive: former professional footballer and now broadcaster, Pat Nevin, said chanting “always had a profound effect; it was special and a complete confidence booster.” Sports psychologist Tom Bates supports this, saying “Psychologically, you know there are lots of people in that tight space supporting you… The more players are aware of this, the more they’re likely to play their best. They want to live up to expectations.” Alternatively, chants can have a negative effect. Nevin said hearing your own fans singing a song of vilification is “like a stab in the heart.” Racist, sexist and homophobic chants have also occurred throughout the years, which have negative effects on players and fans, although fortunately they occur less regularly than positive chants and efforts are being made to prevent any from occurring.
Chants are now also considered in stadium design showing that it is not only fans who think football chanting is significant. Christopher Lee, senior principal architect for the recently opened Tottenham Hotspur stadium states “The project is totally engineered towards creating the best possible atmosphere,” with the south stand being “the ground’s engine, driving both the atmosphere and the players’ performance.” In contrast, the Emirates stadium (Arsenal’s new ground) and the London stadium (West Ham’s ground) have been criticised for the difficulties in creating an ‘atmosphere’ within the ground.
Chants clearly have a powerful effect within football on fans, players and even stadium designers.
Cultural, Social and Group Meanings Within Football Chants
There are many other meanings within football chants, relating to culture, politics, emotion, society and group identity. As Thrills says in, You’re not singing anymore, chants are belted out in unison “with admirable disregard for social tact or melodic quality, these songs gave ordinary supporters the opportunity to air their most passionate and absurd concerns.” This paints a humorous picture, but many people seriously and emotionally relate to the chants to express these views and feel connected as a group of people of different genders, nationalities and socio-economic backgrounds but all supporting the same team. The chants play an important role in creating and maintaining the sense of group identity and loyalty to the club.
According to Victor Turner (cultural anthropologist), “cultures are most fully expressed in and made conscious of themselves in their ritual and theatrical performances,” and this definitely applies to football chants. Football is embedded in some cultures, particularly European or South American, but much less so in others. Within these cultural differences, there are also national, regional and local divisions which cause even more cultural diversity. These diversities influence spectators and their behaviour at matches, including their chants and the way they perform them. In their article Sonic Sport (1992), Sabo and Jansen claim that a football match is “a cultural theatre where the values of larger society are resonated, dominant social practices are legitimized, and structured inequalities are reproduced.” Football chants become one of the vehicles for these larger values and therefore represent cultural nuances and strong national and regional identity.
Following the tradition of “protest songs”, football chanting has also been used as a political protest, with slogans chanted in demonstrations, often accompanied by visual representation. For example, fans of Iran used the 2018 World Cup to protest at the banning of women from attending football matches in Iran. Before the matches, fans, including women from Iran, mingled together in the streets of St Petersburg chanting songs. Banners were also displayed in the stadium, including one saying, “Let Iranian women enter their stadiums”. It is not only the content of the chants that support such beliefs, but also the opportunity and ability to sing them. This is one example of the way football fans use chants to support their social and political stances.
One of the most important aspects of football chanting is how it provides participants with a sense of group identity, a feeling of belonging and an emotional connection to that community. According to musicologist Christopher Small, secular ritual, such as performing football chants, provides “an affirmation of community”, “an act of exploration” and “an act of celebration”. Football chants “articulate a local and global fan identity simultaneously, as fans connect local and distant spaces within global soccer culture” (Ian Collinson). Being part of a larger community, where everyone is experiencing similar emotional responses is very important. The chants are the outward expression of those emotional responses and not being able to perform them potentially reduces this group identity.
Richard Schechner’s manifesto of performance also supports this concept of group identity and emotional connection, as part of the manifesto focuses on the idea of crossing borders; geographical, political, emotional and personal. Music Psychologist Eric Clarke states “that what makes a performance expressive is what the performer brings to the piece beyond what the composer specified in the score,” and this couldn’t be truer than it is for football chants. Existing pop, folk or religious songs adapted for chants are given a new context within football. It is not how they’re notated as text that is important, but how they’re performed by fans. Through this they showcase their emotions of pride, passion and excitement, leading to other emotions such as joy, determination, nostalgia, all stimulated by the atmosphere created by chanting. Other emotions can also occur depending on the chant and when it is sung. For example, commemorations and tributes at the start of matches and any chants sung after this may elicit sadness, thankfulness, patriotism and nostalgia. Emotion and expressiveness in performance is also “culture bound” (Mine Doğantan-Dack), so understanding the performance style of football chants is essential to feeling the emotions they generate.
Chants are key to emotion and expression for football fans, which is also linked to the cultural, social and political importance of the performance of the chants. Although seemingly straight forward, football chants have a rich context behind and within their performances and this has been severely missed this season.