Pedro's Winger
Active Member
- Joined
- Nov 24, 2016
- Messages
- 1,458
- Reaction score
- 2,024
During our wearing of sack-cloth and beating ourselves with birch twigs as self punishment for the football chants we may have sung ........ have we stopped to consider that in the majority of cases, these chants which we are now "labelling" with every "ist" word that has been created, were simply created as a way to try to put a (good) player off their game.
I don't believe that football is a monstrous political machine, I don't believe it is subversive, or even prejudiced in the vast majority of cases. I think that football supporters over the years simply created chants, often aimed at specific players ...... and the purpose was to put them off their game if possible and I don't think that its much more complex than that in the majority of cases.
These chants are never likely to be positive, heart-warming, friendly non-offensive or polite by their very nature. For example; our opponents never sang "Tony Curry's far too good for us please stop playing so well"; or Deano you're a god please don't put the ball in our net today" !!
Chants about Gordon Strachan's red hair, Robbie Fowler snorting coke, Paul Merson being over-portly, Ian Dowie not being so handsome and the regular issue of hurling Mars bars at Gazza come to mind.
In short ...... I don't think that the hate and bile that the PC brigade paint the picture of is necessarily the typical football supporter's chief intention in all this convoluted conspiracy theory ...... its just done to put other players off. Nothing more complex or psychologically deep than that !
In the same way that supporters sing praise (sometimes false) regarding their own player's prowess or capabilities; for example; feeding the Goat and he will score, Lukaku's alleged manhood and Couttsy never relinquishing possession of the ball.
I think that the vast majority of football supporters can put away their sack-cloth shirts and birch twigs, suspend the self-flagellation and simply get on with supporting their team, safe in the knowledge that they will CERTAINLY offend some people with their songs whilst supporting their team, however, the majority of people that they will offend will be offended anyway by something else in everyday life.
UTB & FTP
Pretty much none of those examples is relevant apart from the Lukaku one, which I think he's not happy about.
Racists used to claim that racist chanting was simply about putting players off their game and they didn't really mean it.