Football Chanting - In History and Today
Every chant starts the same way. It takes just one person to raise their voice, and shout out the first line.
One is followed by the second, who joins in for the second line. Then three, then four, then more and more.
In seconds, the voice of one becomes the voice of tens of thousands.
What they are singing, depends on where they are. Hundreds of millions of fans, all over the globe, each with their own specific ingrained songbook developed over decades. Songs that cover their club, their favourite players or their least favourite opposition.
Old Trafford, Manchester, and you may hear “Take me home, United Road”, a chant modelled off John Denver’s 1971 single Take me home, country roads.
If you’re at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, you’ll almost certainly hear “49, 49 undefeated”, a chant that remembers and serenades Arsenal’s undefeated title winners from 2004.
Mohamed Salah is Liverpool’s star forward and his chant can often be heard ringing around Anfield, a chant that dubs the winger “the Egyptian King”.
“He banged the leather for goal”
The earliest recorded football chant is believed to have been written by composer Sir Edward Elgar in 1898 to celebrate Wolverhampton Wanderers striker Billy Malpass.
Elgar’s chant didn’t catch on however, and Albert T Smith’s “On the ball City”, believed to have been written in the 1890s, took its place as the first chant to be sung in the stands.
“Kick it off, throw it in,
Have a little scrimmage,
Keep it low, a splendid rush, bravo, win or die,
On the ball City!
Never mind the danger,
Steady on, now’s your chance, hurrah! We scored!”
Credit to TheJaycanham
In 1902, Norwich City Football Club was born, and “On the ball City” took its place among the stands. Any visitor to Carrow Road will still hear it today, its words still as meaningful to each and every generation of Norwich fan, 120 years on.
162 miles south-west and around 10 years later, another club was adopting a chant that would bleed into the hearts of fans for the next century.
“Play up Pompey,
Pompey play up,
Play up Pompey,
Pompey play up”
Portsmouth’s Fratton Park will still reverberate regularly with the words that were once referred to as “The Town Hall Chimes”.
Chants have come a long way since then, and most are now written by the average fan, rather than ancient composers.
Photo by Sean Benesh on Unsplash
Photo by Sean Benesh on Unsplash
Photo by Stephen Kidd on Unsplash
Photo by Stephen Kidd on Unsplash
Fans like Ben Bennett, who has followed Arsenal since his dad bought him a junior membership in 1988.
His first season ticket came in 1995 and he has followed his team up and down the country ever since.
A particularly standout memory was at Old Trafford, where Ben and thousands of other Arsenal fans watched the Gunners clinch the Premier League title via a Slyvain Wiltord winner.
He recalls dancing across the dual carriageway on the way home, after their driver had mistakenly filled up his diesel-fuelled minibus with petrol. But it didn’t matter. Arsenal were champions.
Ben has always loved the atmosphere that accompanies a game of football. So when fans began to return to stadiums following the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, he decided he wanted to bring a new atmosphere with them.
His first step was to get on Twitter (now known as X) and get in touch with a young group of Arsenal fans known as the Ashburton Army.
“It was good to kind of get to chat to them, and put ideas across to them,” he said, “they were the ones who got the Allez chant out for me.”
The chant Ben referred to, is one that you can hear whenever you visit the Emirates now.
It’s a chant that has been rewritten and enjoyed by fans all over Europe but was best popularised by Liverpool fans during their 2018 run to the Champions League final.
“I love the lyrics. I thought we need to have something about what we’ve achieved and no other club’s done, which is why the lyrics are what they are.”
“We’ve won the league at Anfield,
We’ve won it at the Lane (Twice!),
Stamford Bridge, Old Trafford,
No one can say the same,
Mikel Arteta’s army,
We’re Arsenal through and through,
We’ll sing it in the North Bank,
And in the Clock End too!
Allez, allez, allez,
Allez, allez, allez”
Ben doesn’t just have a hand in writing the chants though, many of his friends have similar ideas and together they will share them out with the fanbase.
When Gabriel Jesus signed for Arsenal in 2022, a local artist who goes by the name NorthBanksy came up with a chant and shared it with Ben. The Brazilian was due to make his debut that day, so Ben and his mates decided it was the perfect time to introduce it at the pub.
The video taken at the pub went viral, and despite Jesus’ Arsenal form tailing off in recent seasons, the chant still can be heard whenever the striker makes an appearance.
“That’s the good thing about social media and video, mobile phones and video cameras. Anything can go off so much quicker than they used to.”
Ben has missed more games than he would’ve liked recently due to his work, but the chants never switch off in his brain.
“Where I’m at work, I’ll wear headphones so I’ll listen to music during the day, or radio or playlist or whatever and something might just pop up,” he explained, “and I’ll think ‘oh we could actually do something with this so I’ll just sling a few bits of lyrics together.”
Those lyrics will make their way through Ben’s group chats and onto social media. Sometimes, they make their way into the stands.
“I do it for support of my club and anything that benefits my team, I’ll try.”
It’s not a one-way relationship though, Arsenal has provided Ben with solace during tough times in his personal life and thinking of new chants has served as a positive distraction.
“It’s like another family,” he said, “everybody has their work, their lives, and they have their kids, but that day release where you just go away, go to the Emirates, go to away games, get on that train, coach, travel, whatever you do.
“That day you go, you shut away your problems. And even though you’ve got to go back to it the next day, for that period of time, you go and see the people you want to see, the people who help you and they’re there for all the same reasons.”
For many like Ben, chanting serves as a voice for a community that provides an escape from everyday life. It’s so much easier to find your own song, when thousands alongside you are singing as well.
Andrew Lawn found his fascination with English football culture progress beyond just experiencing it, and wrote “We lose every week: The history of football chanting”.
“We lose every week: The history of football chanting”
Where did the fascination begin?
Andrew recalls his early memories of going to watch football, where the atmosphere stood out to him.
Why did you want to write the book?
Andrew wanted to tell a new story about football chanting, away from the hooliganism.
Personal favourite?
"We lose every week" is a chant that Andrew loves and one that he sees emblematic of chanting generally.
There are endless possibilities with chants, but they can generally be placed into four categories:
Team based
“Arsenal FC! We’re by far the greatest team, the world has ever seen!”
You’ll hear these for every team regardless of who they are playing. Many sound similar and are formed of the same song but each are timeless for their respective clubs. They have likely been sung in the stands for decades and will be, for years to come.
The advantage given by the noise a group of home fans make cannot be understated.
Individual player based
“You’ll fall in love, I know you will, our number six is the King of Brazil! Our centre half, he’ll give you hell, our wall at the back is Gabriel!”
Among the greatest honours a player can receive is for their fans to sing their name in the stands.
This is a privilege bestowed on the most reliable, most passionate and the best. As well as the players who embrace their connection with the fans. Or maybe their name just works well in a song.
Nevertheless, the players who feature in such chants are often immortalised by them. Ask a fan if he can remember a player from twenty years ago, and that player’s chant will likely be the first thing that pops into their head.
Ian Wright was Arsenal’s club record scorer until being surpassed by Thierry Henry in 2005, but for many “Ian Wright Wright Wright!” will be the first thought.
Opposition based
“Who put the ball in the West Ham net, who put the ball in the West Ham net? Half the f***ing team did!”
The content of these chants can depend on all manner of things. The score last time the team played, the rivalry between them, location, players and many more.
They can be nasty, but mostly they’re good fun.
Context is almost always required to explain why these are sung, and in this case, Arsenal are 5-2 up against West Ham, after beating them 6-0 in their previous meeting.
Personal
“Who’s the w***er, who’s the w***er, who’s the w***er in the pink?”
The lines between humour and nastiness can start to blur here.
Often very funny, sometimes quite mean and always involving some sort of hand gesture (whether that’s pointing or something slightly ruder), these chants can be directed at opposition fans, players or anyone who catches the interest of the stands.
In this scenario, a West Ham fan has dared to have a bit of the courage his team lacked. Unfortunately, he has made a fatal error. He is wearing a slightly too garish pink jumper.
And that is a fact that an entire stand of Arsenal fans are very excited to point out.
Sometimes the line is well and truly leaped over, and unfortunately genuine hatred in the forms of racism, homophobia or other seep into the stands.
Thankfully such examples are rare nowadays and met with genuine action by the authorities, but to ignore their existence would be disingenuous.
Chanting holds its place as an important element of football culture. Important for the players who hear their names sung by thousands, and important for every individual who gives up their hard earned money to sit and stand among their own.
It provides crucial human connection for those who are deprived of it in their lives away from the stands, and gives a chance for the quieter to find their volume.
They make us laugh and they can even make us cry, but most importantly they bring us together.
Built with Shorthand