Okay, I admit. I love American sports, and I hate the hipsterspeople who tell me that European sports are soooooo much more passionate than their American counterparts. It’s true. Europeans sing through the entire game, songs that have probably been sung since Charlemagne mandated them during his reign (don’t bother fact checking this sentence). However, as I have learned in my last year of living in Europe (specifically Berlin), the songs all go basically something like this:
TEAMMMMMMM NAME, TEAM NAME TEAM NAME CLAP CLAP CLAP
or, alternatively:
CLAP CLAP CITY CLAP CLAP TEAM NAME (version 1)
CLAP CLAP TEAM NAME CLAP CLAP CITY (version 2!)
Of course, repeat either ad nauseum, or 90 minutes, whichever comes first. If that isn’t enough to make you want to stuff a cheeseburger down your throat and fire a gun, here’s the plot twist: OPPOSING TEAMS WILL SING THE SAME SONG BUT WITH THE WORDS CHANGED TO X CITY INSTEAD OF Y CITY.
I witnessed this first hand at my first European soccer game last spring. Hertha BSC took on Schalke 04 in the Olympiastadion in Berlin, and it was a great game, except for Hertha conceding in the 89th minute to end up a draw. The chanting kept the crowd from getting much louder in critical points of the game (and it wasn’t like the place was deafening from start to finish). Look, the games themselves are interesting, the play, especially in soccer, is top caliber (in Germany, England, Spain and to a lesser extent Italy), but the fans are not nearly as interesting or passionate as those in the US. Yep, I said it. And this applies to other sports I have seen here in Europe as well (namely hockey).
The chants are just the first part. Second, the fashion. Sure, it’s a function of the weather, soccer season goes over the winter, which means that black coats are the norm, as to be expected. In the dead of winter, you will never see the blue that Dodger Stadium sees in August, or the red of Fedex Field in the fall. But even in nice weather, you will rarely see the Olympiastadion in Berlin filled with blue, though you’d be lucky to see it filled at all. Instead, what you will see are thousands upon thousands of colored scarves. Scarves. The European obsession with the scarf is a strange one. Germans think keeping your throat warm is the key to avoiding sickness, to the point of even wearing them when in an air conditioned building (as I learned this summer at my place of employment). As such vital tools in protecting, it only makes sense to have scarves around your favorite local obsession. And once a game, everyone will stand with their scarf in their hands, fully unfurled, and risking personal harm by not warming their throats. Once. That’s it. The scarves will sometimes make a reappearance by the Ultras, the super fans generally located behind one goal line of the stadium.
The third and final major gripe that I have is that there seems to be very little discussion of the game that is actually happening. The fans are either too busy chanting, or drinking a beer (EXCEPT IN THE UK WHERE BEER IS NOT SERVED AT SOCCER MATCHES COULD YOU EVER EVEN IMAGINE WHAT LEAGUE REVENUES WOULD BE LIKE IF THEY COULD?) to notice. If you go to a baseball game, chatting is the norm. Soccer moves at generally a similar pace, with the excitement slowly crescendoing, and defense able to quickly end a rally. As such, it seems the perfect venue to discuss what’s happening on the field, but rarely will you see people chatting about what is going on. The same holds true for hockey, where you will only occasionally see a spirited debate about the merits of a line change, which even in Phoenix I found to be commonplace. It just doesn’t happen here. And I don’t know why.
Overall, I want to be clear: going to sporting events in Europe is fun. It’s exciting, the games are good, and the atmosphere is different, and kind of cool at first, but it wears off fast. America can take a lot of ideas and apply them in the US (Ultras being the number one, perhaps less the flares, or general rioting that they tend to be involved in). A section of season ticket holders in a hockey arena who are dedicated to the team and all sit in one section so that they can start chants, organize collective noise when necessary, is absolutely needed in the US. Its the college student section, but at a professional level.
Likewise, Europe could take a few notes from their American counterparts. The main is simply getting noisy at critical parts of the game, stop the chanting 100% of the time, and keep the ultras from lighting things on fire.
All of this being said, you should still expect me to take in a few Hertha BSC (and Eisbaeren Berlin) games this winter, because
CLAP CLAP HERTHA CLAP CLAP BSC CLAP CLAP HERTHA CLAP CLAP BSC
isn’t always that bad of a time. And hey, Wir wollen die Eisbaeren seh’n (We want to see the Eisbaeren).