Reacting to England’s BEST football chants
The football chant that made me burst out laughing was about having the ball. Then the team lost it, and the supporters changed their chant to announce that instead. That’s it. Celebrating possession and immediately updating everyone about the failure was peak comedy to me.
I hadn’t been to a professional or semi-professional football match when my reaction video was published in May 2024. I don’t care about football, and my partner doesn’t watch it either. British humour, though, I do love. The compilations gave me a way to enjoy that without suddenly developing an interest in the result.
Losing didn’t stop the singing
My favourite chants were often the ones aimed at the supporters’ own team. In one, the fans told their opponents not to feel special about beating them because they lost every week anyway. That is an excellent way to ruin someone else’s victory while admitting your own team is having a terrible time.
It felt very British to me. The supporters weren’t singing only because they were winning, or only to throw off the other side. They were making fun of themselves and everybody else. A comment under one compilation pointed out that the fans kept the excitement up even when losing badly, and I thought that was a good observation.
The possession chant did that especially well. I didn’t need to know the players, the league or the score to understand the joke. They had the ball, then they didn’t, and they sang about both. I loved that willingness to make their own disappointing moment part of the entertainment.
Even leaving early could become a joke
Another favourite involved supporters leaving the stadium early. The other fans sang as though there must be a fire drill. I imagined being so fed up with watching your team lose that you wanted to go home, only for the other crowd to start mocking the exit. Savage.
That example also fed a question I couldn’t answer. Were these chants planned in advance so everyone knew the words, or did a creative person and a few mates start singing something and the rest catch on? Some lines appeared in more than one compilation. The fire-drill joke felt specific to the moment, but hearing familiar chants again made me wonder which were regular favourites. I wasn’t claiming to know how they began.
I was grateful the compilation makers included written lyrics. With lots of people shouting together, I thought I’d struggle to understand some of it otherwise. The words mattered because the jokes could be much more specific than a crowd simply cheering or swearing.
Being the target was a different prospect. I imagined myself as a professional athlete, which is already quite a stretch, and thought a crowd chanting that something I’d done was embarrassing would stay with me for the rest of my life. I could laugh while watching. I did not think I’d cope well on the pitch.
My baseball memories were mostly about food
My own experience of watching sport was different. Growing up outside Toronto, I’d been to hockey games and quite a few Blue Jays games, but never a soccer match in Canada. The best baseball outings were sunny ones with the dome open, a hot dog, nachos, perhaps peanuts and an overpriced drink, with friends or family around me. I am very food motivated.
I couldn’t remember chanting like this at those games. I’d also watched baseball in Chicago, New York and Cleveland, and remembered cheering rather than this kind of chanting. That was a comparison with the games I’d attended, not proof that nobody in North America ever sings at a match. I was curious what other countries’ supporters did.
I did remember a train journey, I think out of London and back towards Kent, when a match had finished and football supporters got on singing. At first I thought things were about to kick off. Watching these compilations, though, I found a lot of the chanting silly and fun. That didn’t mean every crowd or every insult was harmless. For me, the creativity and self-mockery were the attraction. I still didn’t like football, but I was having a great time with the chants.
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