Fan chants aren’t just about rooting for your team, but about tapping into a deep affinity for collective singing.Getty Images
This past July, Michael Grigoriev of Ottawa travelled to MetLife Stadium in New Jersey to watch the Canadian men’s soccer team play against Argentina in the semifinal of the Copa America. In the crowd of around 80,000, amidst what he says was “a sea of Argentinian blue and white”, he joined thousands of Canadian fans in chanting for their team. One of the cries that got the fans going: “We’re red, we’re white, we’re (bleeping) dynamite!”
“It felt like everything that I had been wanting, which was for this country to be able to compete on the global stage.”
Grigoriev is a dedicated fan of men’s and women’s soccer, and attends many local and national games. He knows there’s a long history of soccer chants around the world, and some of that tradition has rubbed off in Canada. But he’s among those who say that organic, fan-led chanting creativity is often lacking in other spectator sports.
To Grigoriev, who grew up a fan of the Montreal Canadiens and a hockey player, hockey games rely too much on manufactured stadium noise, often directing the crowd to chant at the right times with prizes to incentivize fans.
“It’s just so engineered in every other North American sports environment,” he says, calling soccer a “purer version of the fan experience”.
Chants can be important to fans and players alike, says Liam Cole Young, an associate professor at Carleton University’s School of Journalism and Communication.
“Fans are signaling to the team, ‘we’re in this with you’,” Young says. “Announcers talk about it all the time, how the athletes are feeding off the crowd.”
In today’s modern culture, Young says we’ve largely moved away from the folk tradition of singing communally. Throughout history, that has been used for everything from storytelling to commemorating important events. Now, there are still a few places where participatory singing is welcome. Sports venues, like karaoke bars, “tap into that deep human desire” to sing together, says Young.
Group singing has been shown to strengthen social bonds, and in arenas and stadiums, it can boost your team’s morale and be “intimidating and overwhelming” to the opponents, he adds.
Yet, chants have become predictable and generic. Crowds anywhere shout “You suck!” when an official makes a perceived bad call, and sing along to the same old piped-in jukebox of songs – “Livin’ on a Prayer”, “Sweet Caroline”, “Seven Nation Army”, “We Will Rock You” – that make one venue and fan base indistinguishable from the next. And for long stretches, fans aren’t chanting at all.
“You often hear pundits, athletes or fans complain about their home rink being too quiet, and really wanting the fans to do more,” Young says.
He wonders if the number of corporate season tickets is partly to blame. “Those people tend to be less into the game, and more just kind of chatting in their box. You tend to lose that collective ‘folksy’ dimension of fandom.”
Many fans yearn for the passion that chants demonstrate. On a family trip to Tempe, Arizona, Mona Farahmand of Toronto was able to see the Maple Leafs play against the Coyotes. She says there were more people chanting “Go, Leafs, go!” than there were people chanting for the Arizona Coyotes (who have since moved to Utah). “It was just incredible to me,” Farahmand says. “It gives the players a lot of energy and a lot of love.”
Farahmand once worked as an usher at the Rogers Centre, so saw every Blue Jays home game. “I would be screaming at the top of my lungs, especially during playoffs,” Farahmand says. “That’s the fun of it.”
Growing up in the Ottawa Valley and Arnprior, Michaela Schreiter was an avid hockey player, often the only girl on the boys’ team. She has fond memories of the Ottawa Senators crowd chanting “Alfie! Alfie! Alfie!” in each period when the game clock hit 11:11. That was a nod to team captain Daniel Alfredsson, who wore number 11.
Schreiter now works in communications for The Ottawa Hospital, and hosts a weekly TSN Radio Network show called She’s Got Game. She attends a lot of sports, and loves chanting along with the crowd. That’s why she says it would be great for fans and teams if even more people did it.
“It’s an inside joke with 18,000 other people,” she says. “That’s one of the most fun parts of being a sports fan – getting to know the rituals that you can participate in.”
