Football as a sport has plenty of issues, from hooliganism to racism via the use of language on the terraces that is far from family-friendly. In the vast majority of instances, though, the chanting that you’ll hear at a football match is amusing and supportive.
Sure, there will usually be some songs sung that are designed to wind-up the opposition’s supporters, but most of the time it is all about showing love to the team that the fans are there to get behind.
The big question is, where does such chanting come from? How do songs get going and who started some of the more famous ones in the first place, if that is even known?
An Expression of Collective Identity
First and foremost, football songs and chants are used an expression of the collective identity of those that attend matches. They can be used to support the team in a general sense, or show specific love to a particular player or a manager. Because they require supporters to all sing along together, they are usually quite simplistic in nature and generally tend to be short and repetitive.
That isn’t always the case, of course, but more often than not they will adapt pop songs or other well-known ditties that everyone involved with can get behind and join in with in order to show their love of the football team that they’re watching.
@footychantss | #pusb #coventrycity #football #footy #footballchants #footballfans #fyp ♬ original sound – Footy Chants
There have been chants of some sort involved in football from the late 19th century, but since the 1960s they have been developed into the more popular form that we’re used to hearing in the modern day. Some of them have been sung virtually since the start of a football club’s existence, whilst others come about because of the development of the game and the way in which supporters show their love.
There is an argument that football songs come from the same lineage as folk songs, with the likes of ‘Fitba’ Crazy’ intended for the musical halls rather than the football terraces, whilst Edward Elgar actually composed a song specifically for a Wolverhampton Wanderers striker. It never caught on.
The Modern Development
In the 1960s, emerging fan culture meant that chants and songs began to change and be adapted. Part of that is thought to be the growth and development of youth culture, which coincided with the fact that popular songs would be played over the tannoy system at football grounds before kick-off and at half-time.
At the same time, the exposure to foreign cultures courtesy of the likes of the World Cup gave supporters a glimpse into what other supporters would do. The ‘Brazil cha-cha-cha’ chant turned into ‘Liverpool’ followed by three claps, for example. As chants became more popular, the use of songs as the basis for them also increased.
@our.vintage.life #liverpool #thekop #1960s #britishpathe #britishhistory #rememberthis #waybackwhen #takemeback #over50club #over60sclub #vintagevibes #oldschool #nostalgia #genx #boomer ♬ original sound – 60s child
Liverpool supporters have been responsible for many chants that then became widely used. ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ was sung in honour of Ian St John, later adapted by the likes of Southampton, whilst the chorus of ‘We Shall Not be Moved’ was taken for when the Reds hit the top of the league regularly in the 1970s and 1980s.
With Liverpool being one of the most successful clubs in the country at the time, opposition supporters would then copy them, coming up with their own versions of songs that they had heard whilst at Anfield and singing them at their own stadiums or in the grounds of opposition teams.
How the Songs are Created
The manner in which Liverpool supporters came up with the chants in the first place is a big part of the answer to the question posed by this article. Supporters would travel all round Europe watching the Reds play in the European Cup and would come up with songs whilst on buses, coaches and trains travelling the continent.
Even to this day that is one of the chief ways in which songs and chants are created. Whether it be a long journey to face a team in Baku or simply the trip from Sunderland to the south coast, away fans often use the smaller number of supporters together to spread the tunes that they’ve decided to sing.
Nowadays, many fans will watch matches with the same groups, either in person or in pubs and bars close to the ground. These groups will come up with their own songs and chants, some of which will catch on to the wider supporter base. Add in the ability of social media to spread something and it’s reasonably easy to see how it is that songs become popular.
In countries like Germany, there is often a leader of a group of ‘ultras’ that will decide what is being sung and lead the group in it, but it doesn’t happen in quite such an organised and structured way when it comes to football clubs and supporters in the United Kingdom.
@ultra.lifestyle_official Dynamo Dresden with 5 thousend ultras in Prague🟡⚫️🇩🇪 #ultras #hooligans #awaydays #dynamo #fyp ♬ Originalton – ULTRAS❤️🩹😍
That being said, it is not uncommon for football clubs to assign areas of the ground as ‘singing sections’, with supporters expected to join in with the songs that are being sung in order to help create the atmosphere. Some clubs have areas where the more vocal supporters naturally tend to get tickets, such as the Kop at Anfield, the Gwladys Street end at Goodison Park or the Stretford End at Old Trafford.
When Tottenham Hotspur’s new stadium was designed, a decision was taken to try to imitate the Yellow Wall at Borussia Dortmund’s Westfalenstadion with the creation of one of the sections of the ground there.
Terrace Wit
The reality is that a lot of songs and chants sung by football supporters often emerge from terrace wit. When two teams struggling against a relegation battle play one another, for example, one set of fans might sing ‘Going down, going down, going down’ to the others. The second set of fans may replay with ‘So are we, so are we, so are we’, thereby turning the chant around.
Supporters will often head to an opposition team’s home ground and sing something like ‘Is this a library?’, in spite of the clear lack of books available to be borrowed, or ‘Where’s your famous atmosphere?’, to which the answer is usually ‘Not on display against Brentford for a 12.30pm kick-off’.
Ipswich get battered everywhere they go rings around Carrow Road 🎶
— The Pink Un (@pinkun) August 24, 2024
The more enjoyable a chant is or the more that it seems to speak to something, the more likely it is to take off. Songs will reflect not just the football club and its supporters but also wider society as a whole. One of the first football songs that caught on and continued to sung today was ‘On the Ball, City’, an anthem that Norwich City fans are prone to belt out whilst watching their club play matches.
It isn’t exactly the most thrilling song, written in the 1890s and in regular use on the terraces by the time the 1920s rolled around. Yet in spite of that it is still popular because of that ‘folk song‘ nature of football chants that stand the test of time.
Pub Singers
When it comes to the proliferation of new songs, the pubs close to the ground have always been a good place to go. Pete Boyle was a Manchester United fan who would often be found standing on one of the tables at a pub not far from Old Trafford, the Bishop Blaize, singing songs and encouraging others to join in.
The famous song ‘Eric the King’, which is still sung nowadays, was adapted from a song about Denis Law for Eric Cantona. At United’s rivals Liverpool, Jamie Webster became known for come up with songs like ‘He’s Virgil van Dijk’ to the tune of ‘Dirty Old Town’, which celebrated the club’s Dutch central defender.
Webster sang an interpretation of the Italian song L’Estate Sta Finendo, or ‘Summer is Ending’, that had been popularised on the terraces of Porto and some Italian clubs. He performed it at a Boss Night, which was an event put on before some Liverpool matches, and it was filmed and put on YouTube, becoming a huge terrace song that accompanied the club’s sixth European Cup win as well as their first title of the Premier League era. The singer said, “That song was almost like the rebirth of Liverpool FC is a European force, in my opinion”.
It is another example of how social media allows for the dissemination of chants and songs.
Exact Origins Are Often Impossible to Tell
The reality is that the exact origins of most football chants are impossible to tell. The Jamie Webster version of the Italian disco song that became ‘Allez, Allez, Allez’ began to be sung by supporters of other clubs, such as Aston Villa, with the lyrics adapted to be more relevant to them.
Those that hadn’t heard Liverpool fans sing it would claim that they invented it and decades later that would become the ‘truth’. Though some chants, such as ‘Here We Go’ can be more easily identified because of the song that they take the tune of, most are so old now that precisely how they began has been lost to history and might not be true anyway.
Liverpool better sign Alisson given he’s gone to the trouble of learning how to play the Allez Allez Allez song on his guitar: pic.twitter.com/N3hRjiGlNa
— Sachin Nakrani (@SachinNakrani) July 19, 2018
The tune to ‘Here We Go’ was taken from John Philip Sousa’s ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever’, but many clubs’ supporters adopted it to chant their own side’s name. Nottingham Forest fans would sing ‘Brian Clough’ to the tune, for example, or Highbury and then the Emirates would ring out to the tune with the word ‘Arsenal’ instead.
If a team is being beaten quite heavily and the supporters are leaving the ground early, the opposition’s fans might sing the word ‘Cheerio!’ to the same tune to bid them goodbye. Knowing exactly how and when this phenomenon began is all but impossible to tie down with any degree of precisions.
It is believed that Tottenham Hotspur supporters were the first to take Elgar’s classical tune for ‘Land of Hope and Glory‘ and adopt the lyrics to say, “We hate Nottingham Forest, we hate Arsenal too. We hate Manchester United, but Tottenham we love you”. The likelihood is that if you support a football club then you will have your own version of that, but how could anyone claim to know precisely who started it?
Similarly, ‘Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory’ was an American folk song, with the words ‘Glory, glory, hallelujah’ changed to ‘Glory, glory Man United’ or *insert name of your club here* at some point over the years.
@faizaafc7 🎶 And it’s Arsenal, Arsenal FC, we’re by far the greatest team, the world has ever seen! 🎶 @arsenal ♥️ #LoyalGoonerette #EmiratesStadium #ATID #LoveArsenal #Football #Arsenal #COYG #UTA #Fyp #ForYouPage #ForYou #ViralVideo #Viral #RedAndWhite #ArsenalForLife #PremierLeague #ARSMUN #NorthLondonForever ♬ original sound – Mrs Arsenal ♥️
If you look at the likes of forums and other places, you will often discover supporters of one club suggesting that supporters of another club have ‘stolen’ their song. Claims that ‘By far the greatest team’ was a chant sung by Arsenal fans during the club’s Invincibles era can be quickly debunked, but it’s easy to see why someone might not think that the song had been in football circles for years if they were quite young.
It is all part of the confusion around the history and creation of songs that become popular on terraces and then move from one ground to another as supporters adopt them to be relevant for their own usage.
