As the World Cup comes to Tarrant County, I’ve been tapped to look at the wild and extremely varied world of soccer chants. Fans all over the world have used music as a way of encouraging their team, winding up the opposition, and expressing their solidarity. If you’re used to college football and basketball teams employing bands to amp up their fans, strap in for this look at sports-related music that comes from the fans themselves.
Some songs become identified with certain clubs, most notably Liverpool adopting “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from the Broadway musical Oklahoma! The song came to be identified with the Reds after British Invasion band and Liverpool natives Gerry and the Pacemakers scored a chart-topping hit with it, and it can be spine-tingling when Liverpool fans sing it in full roar.
West Ham United took up an even older song in “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” which dates to 1919. The reasons the team chose this song remain obscure, but to this day, West Ham celebrates home victories with machines blowing soap bubbles to the fans.
On England’s southern coast, Southampton’s team is nicknamed the Saints, and so the fans sing “When the Saints Go Marching In” when the team does well.
Nor is it just British fans who use popular songs: Rotterdam-based powerhouse Feyenoord plays “I Will Survive” as their club song. In post-World War II Brazil, the Rio de Janeiro-born songwriter Lamartine Babo famously responded to a dare from a radio show caller by writing fight songs for all 11 professional soccer teams that called Rio home. Many of those songs are still in use all these decades later.
Then there are chants that are about specific players. In the 1990s, Manchester United fans celebrated their Norwegian striker Ole Gunnar Solskjær (whose last name is pronounced sol-share) by singing, “You are my Solskjær, my Ole Solskjær, you make me happy when skies are gray.”
On an even funnier note, longtime Everton left-back Leighton Baines inspired his fans to channel Carly Simon: “Leighton Baines, I’ll bet you think this song is about you.” Bobby Zamora was a powerful, left-footed striker whose early career in the 2000s was marked by egregious misses that he sent into the seats behind the goal. Thus, fans sang to the tune of “That’s Amore!”: “When you’re sitting in Row Z / And the ball hits your knee / That’s Zamora!”
National teams also have their own chants, ones that can make American fans’ “U-S-A” chant look trite. (Our “I believe that we will win” chant is more creative and began in the U.S. Naval Academy.) Chilean fans are known for their cry of “Chi, chi, chi! Le, le, le! Chile!,” while Italy fans became famous in 2006 by singing the guitar riff from the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” during their team’s triumphant run to the World Cup title. When African countries started competing in the World Cup, supporters of Cameroon, Nigeria, and Senegal captivated the world by playing drums for all 90 minutes of the game and stoking a party atmosphere in the stadium.
Of course, much like all types of fandom, soccer chants can shade over into hatefulness and cruelty. The sport’s history is littered with racist and homophobic taunts, often aimed at specific players by fans who believe that these fall within the bounds of acceptable gamesmanship.
But then, when players and coaches bring derision on themselves, chants can be a creative and nonviolent way for fans to express their disapproval. In 2022, when video surfaced of West Ham defender Kurt Zouma physically abusing his own cat, fans around England let him have it, encouraging him to kick the ball like it was his cat. When he exited a game against Manchester City with an injury a few weeks later, the City fans sang at him: “That’s how your cat feels.”
The chant of “you don’t know what you’re doing” can be shouted at either opposing teams or one’s own team and has applications well beyond sports. During lopsided home losses, fans of downtrodden teams have chanted at the opposition, “You’re nothing special, we lose every week.”
However, losing can also bring out the best in fans, too. People still talk about Euro 2012, when Ireland crashed out of the tournament thanks to a 4-0 shellacking from eventual champions Spain. Rather than lamenting their team’s poor performance, the Irish fans sang their fight song “Fields of Athenry.” The display of spirit was so inspiring that the broadcasters calling the game for German TV fell silent in admiration. At times like that, the music can remind everyone of what really matters about sports.
