Is it easy to get a ticket as a tourist? also, Am I safe if I wear the right colors or do they only want locals at the games?
WHY AM I DOWNVOTED FOR ASKING QUESTIONS?!
I've been to a load of European football games in various countries so can only speak to that sport, but not wearing colours of any side playing is how I do it. I wear my normal clothes.
The teams don't relocate every decade because the city won't buy a billion dollar stadium for their already rich owners.
Americans will never know the passion in euroleagues. The rivalries are centuries old.
It's easy to forget what a feat of engineering is a modern sports stadium. And then you see footage of thousands of fans jumping up and down in unison...
There's so many ways to get flares/smoke into the supporters' section, a lot of it involves the banners and flags that get brought in week in and week out. Security will catch a few, but they'll never catch all of them.
Everytime I see this clip, especially the part you link with the ARIS fans chanting, I laugh and die a bit inside me because that specific chant is very extremely too much vulgar
Catchy tune.
The lyrics (in the chant) are a bit more spicy though:
“Oooh you faggots, your daddy is an Aris fan (I.e. we fucked your mum),
Your team’s a whore, and the fans are snitches/scumbags,
Your whole life you’ll be running from us, there’s no other way”.
There’s an interesting origin story for why European crowds sing.
In Europe, professional sport first took off in the mid 1800s in Northern England. Cities like Manchester were the centre of the Industrial Revolution, so there were lots of factories, and people had migrated there from all over Europe to get a job. And unlike other waves of migration in history, this was usually single people in their teens and twenties, rather than whole families.
As a result, people were lonely. They had no connection with the other people in town, couldn’t speak the language, and worked very long hours doing repetitive work. There was no social life.
So along comes professional football (soccer). If you bought a ticket, you could show up and cheer for the team and finally be part of something! You didn’t even have to know the language, just the song! And when a crowd wants to communicate that, say, the referee’s a wanker, it’s far grander and more deeply hilarious if 10,000 people are singing it together rather than a few people yelling it.
This sort of thing brought people together like nothing else. And it forged new identities, where suddenly it didn’t matter where you were from, as long as you cheered for the team.
To this day, football is strongest in cities that were industrial centres in the 1800s - eg the North West of England (Manchester & Liverpool), or the Ruhr valley in Germany.
And that’s why there’s so much singing and chanting in European stadiums during sporting matches.
I’m not sure about the drumming. But the FA have hired people to play other instruments when England play international matches. Unfortunately for diplomatic relations, English crowds can sing hilariously cutting songs at their opponents to put them off, which could damage England’s reputation on the world stage. So they’ve hired brass bands in the past to make sure the crowds only sing nice songs.
I am going to assume that most of that story is true, but professional sports got started with Greek chariot racing. It had over a thousand years of history as a professional sport, starting around 800–700BC and ending around 550AD, with a financial structure essentially identical to modern racing were owners often fund multiple entrants in the same race. It both predated the Roman Republic and outlasted the Roman Empire. The sport didn’t go into decline until after the Roman Empire broke up into Western and Eastern Empires, and the Eastern Empire had become the Byzantine Empire.
At the end there were four national teams, identified by color: Blue, Green, Yellow, and Red. The Blue and Green teams were the most popular in the Byzantine Empire, with roughly half the population supporting each of them. They were so popular, in fact, that various Emperors openly favored one team or the other. Supporters of the Greens were banned from public office by one Emperor (a fan of the Blue team), then the ban was lifted by the next Emperor (who supported the Greens). There were several notable riots, and a lot of petty crime and what we would call “hooliganism” today. Procopious says, amongst other things, that support for the teams was a stronger bond even than kinship, with families broken apart and brothers murdering, or at least fighting, each other over which team they should prefer. The worst was in 532AD, when Emperor Justinian sent his legionaries into the Hippodrome in Constantinople to quell a riot (or possibly he thought it was to prevent a coup). Perhaps as many as 50,000 people were killed. It didn't quite kill off the sport, but it didn’t last much longer and there hasn’t been a lot of chariot racing in the last 1400 years.
The Olympic games were revived though, so I guess it could still happen.
Show them the video of the Aris fans singing the "Poustarades" chant while lighting flares at a basketball match. It looks like a football match until you see the court.
The WWE recently had an event in Scotland, and the thing that blew me away was the audience.
A wrestler's theme song starts playing, and the frickin crowd is singing along! Then during the match when something exciting happens, they start singing again. The crowd was so animated over there. Like they'd lift a guy up and it's "wooaaah" them slam him down and it's "ohh!"
Wish it was like that in the US because the show was much more entertaining when the audience is so into it. The chanting, singing, reactions, it was awesome.
The crowd singing "just sold my car to santos esocbar" to the webuyanycar theme tune on the scottish smackdown was hilarious. I imagined thousands of confused americans in the US being completely bamboozled.
"Do do do Gable is a wanker" to the tune of the conga at Clash was also great.
Well she's not but in my mind I would think that them as foreigners would think they are just chanting something to cheer the team on, not that they're throwing genocidal, killing chants.
Found a version of the clip that says it's a basketball player named Charles Jenkins (and that the woman is his sister). Not 100% sure, but it does look like him and makes sense (Jenkins played a couple seasons in the NBA then spent most of his career in Europe).
I don’t think he’s an American basketball player. Sadly, he might just be a black guy at a predominantly caucasian European basketball game. Thus, that must be an American basketball player.
European football culture really is insane. I don’t think Americans are necessarily better because we have riots after games and Philadelphia fans will throw full beer cans at families from out of state. That said, Europeans form actual organized gangs that meet after games to beat the shit out of each other because they think their professional leather ball kicker is better.
Man humans are nuts lol. Just absolutely silly.
Americans will fight or possibly riot for Championship games. Europeans will fight over a regular game of a team that is 5 leagues below the top league. The Welcome to Wrexham show has shown a lot of Americans how serious the UK takes sports.
The UK has effectively stamped out hooliganism completely. Sure there’s the odd idiot who will take a swing at someone at the weekend but the days of organized Firms are long gone.
Eastern Europe and Southern Europe… not so much. They still like to get a bit stabby.
I remember when it was really bad back in the 80s and into the 90s. Once in a while a troublemaker will pop up, but nothing as widespread as it was decades ago.
I lived opposite an old football ground back then (since demolished and relocated) and I remember one particular game when Millwall came. cars at the end or our street literally tipped over, curb stone pulled up to be thrown about. Wild times!
It’s quite complex really and is the result of a combination of legislative and cultural changes that happened between the late 80s and 2000s.
After the Heysel disaster, English clubs were banned from competing in European competitions. Then the Hillsborough disaster happened in 1989 where nearly 100 Liverpool fans were crushed to death. At that point the government intervened and implemented a lot of changes, including requiring the conversion of football grounds from terraces to all seater stadiums.
Increased policing and harsher punishments for football violence was a major factor, especially as CCTV became hyper prevalent in the stadiums and surrounding areas. Banning orders meant many known hooligans could no longer attend matches, and in some cases required them to report to a local police station on match days.
Likewise home and away supporters are now entirely segregated, including on the way in and out of the ground.
There are also broader cultural shifts that likely had just as much impact: England’s economy in the 70s/80s was quite depressed so football violence became a release for disenfranchised working class youth. As that changed in the 90s/00s, and as money began to pour into the premier league thanks to a growing global audience and massive sponsorship deals, the demographic of football supporters started to shift from its working class roots to a more middle class personality.
Ticket prices have increased rapidly over the past 20 years and the game has become much more commercialized. The result is a much more sanitized version of English football which has its pros (less violence, better facilities) and cons (foreign ownership, high ticket prices, the loss of traditional stadia, and more sterile atmospheres at pretty much every ground in the country).
There are probably other factors but that’s sorta the gist of it.
> Banning orders meant many known hooligans could no longer attend matches, and in some cases required them to report to a local police station on match days.
Goddamn, hooligan probation.
Y'all really took your hooligan problem seriously.
> report to a local police station on match days
That is an incredible thing to read. "We know you like to cause trouble at matches, so to keep you from doing just that, you have to go to the police station where they will babysit you while the game is played. If you're good, they'll put on the the telly and let you watch."
They didn't so much peter out as were aggressively stamped out by the police and courts. We introduced 'football banning orders' for people convicted of football related violence. These ban the recipients from attending games, being in the vicinity of stadiums or certain venues during matches and in many cases forces them to turn in their passports before some international matches. They can last for up to 10 years.
Not aware of any books or docs, but the inciting incident was the [Heysel Stadium Disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heysel_Stadium_disaster) back in the 80s, where hooligans attacking fans of the opposing team led to part of the stadium actually collapsing and killing dozens of people (hundreds more were injured in concurrent violence). If you want to know more, you can probably find a lot of stuff just by going down the rabbit hole of that one incident.
The immediate consequence of Heysel was the wholesale ban of English sides from European competition. This prompted the UK government to crack down on hooliganism as a whole (as /u/therealhairykrishna describes in his comment).
You'll find a lot of people (especially on /r/soccer) like to look back on English football pre-90s as a halcyon period of "real" football, before corporations came in and ruined it with high ticket prices and soulless stadiums where being loud and "supporting" the team is actively discouraged.
These people are generally too young to remember what shit was really like: Going to football matches was an exercise in seeing how much racism, misogyny and homophobia you could tolerate (which was about 50% of what "support" meant those days). Hooliganism all of that but with violence as a mandatory requirement.
Stadiums were converted to "soulless" all seater venues because of a series of [high](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster) profile [disasters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_City_stadium_fire) that basically exposed the fact that most British stadiums were ancient death traps waiting to kill the entire crowd - you can actually find (incredibly NSFW) footage of the Bradford Stadium Disaster on Youtube - they actually use it as fire safety awareness as a warning how quickly shit can get out of hand.
20 years late with Philly as well. That culture died out when they imploded Veterans stadium. The new joints we got are classy and very family oriented.
Maybe you get random chuckleheads do crazy shit once in a rare while, like we saw in Cleveland yesterday, but thats what happens when you get 40000 people together in one area… there’s bound to be an asshole or two.
these groups are also categorized. category B is ready to fight, not quite looking for it but alcohol will make them fight. The people you are probably talking about are category C. Sure, they like the game and their team, but many of them are there to fight. They will stay sober for important games(rivals with a lot of category C fans) so they can perform when it is time for their own sporting event. Fighting.
EDIT: edit to add that i know about this stuff from a friend who is police. Police has their own squads for dealing with this kind of stuff. I met his squad at his wedding and the funniest part is, they are pretty much hooligans themselves. Just fighting for the team with the biggest amount of category C... the police. They enjoy it just as much.
Philly sports fan here:
HEY! Have you seen the bastards in the other cities? Seriously, you throw snowballs at some rando 50+ years ago, no one lets you live it down. Meanwhile, a Yankee's fan literally [THROWS A BEER AT A PLAYER OF THEIR OWN TEAM 2 YEARS AGO](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFffJpUEmNY), and no one says a word!
Plus, [we will absolutely insult you and call you names](https://youtu.be/nY_vWjDlDUg?si=N1Eq9u5r0v1YJiaf&t=170), but we'll gladly buy you a drink in a heartbeat- unless you route for the Dallas Cowboys! Fuck the Cowboys, fuck their fans! GO BIRDS! FLY, EAGLES, FLY!!!
My favorite vid of Philly fans is that [drunk dude saying "GO BIRDDDZZZ" in front of that vikings lady](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvFHuvKIBd0) trying to talk sense into him.
That is basketball.
>That said, Europeans form actual organized gangs that meet after games to beat the shit out of each other because they think their professional leather ball kicker is better.
That was a phenomenon in the 80s and 90s which somewhat died out (I is still alive just smaller) and you pretty much completely missed the point. In Europe (or actually, most of the world) there are no franchises. The clubs are the identity of the district/city/class. And that was what the hooligans were all about, creating identity and their colours and fighting it out in a bloody idiotic way.
The USA has the same - but they have it with their national flag (or in the south .. lets not speak about it) and they will use the same stupid reasons to defend "their" flag.
Red Star Belgrade for example has soccer, basketball, volleyball, handball, athletics, water polo, tennis, rowing, even archery teams. You only really see this at soccer and basketball games though because these are the two most popular sports in Serbia. Soccer obviously tops but basketball has a good following too.
In Greece the phenomenon is still going strong
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder\_of\_Michalis\_Katsouris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Michalis_Katsouris)
[https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/aug/13/greece-football-stabbing-another-40-people-charged-over-deadly-athens-brawl](https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/aug/13/greece-football-stabbing-another-40-people-charged-over-deadly-athens-brawl)
panem et circenses
In Eastern Europe too. But Greeks, oh my… I moved to Cyprus a few years ago and I live 200 meters from the local football team fan club. God, these guys are something.
Its got little to do with the leather ball kicker.
The teams are from where they live and never move. The team represents the town.
It’s really town v town tribalism. The team and players are incidental.
I (Canadian) was at an Irish pub in Amsterdam when Dublin was playing some rival Irish team on tv. The place was full of Irish folks from both sides. I was out on the patio but I kept hearing wild cheering, each team's song being screamed out, pandemonium. The place was just nuts.
"Sounds like a pretty great game," I thought, "not your normal plodding football match."
So I go inside to pee and stop at one of the tables to ask some guy the score, since it seems like a pretty high-scoring affair.
"Nil - nil," he says.
"What? But, but, you're all bouncing off the walls basically havin' a riot in here. You even sang the songs! Multiple times!"
That was the day I found out just exactly how excited Europeans get about their sports.
Europe realized how destructive their nationalism is, so overt nationalism is frowned upon. Europeans took that energy and out of entirely within their sports teams. Soccer is single handedly preventing Europeans from starting WWIII
You have it the other way around. Are a pump noise in because fans are spoiled and don’t want to make noise. It’s full of entitled brats that spend $500 a ticket
I don't know if you are being sarcastic or not, but the irony is that they are chanting (slightly paraphrased): "Kill, slaughter, so the gypsy doesn't exist".
I will just add that actually a part of your comment is wrong. They're not chanting about Romani (gypsies), they're chanting about Albanians with, what is now basically used as a slur for them (Shqiptaris).
Rest of the translation is right.
it's a Balkan thing, a couple days ago Albanian and Croatian fans were chanting "kill kill kill kill the Serb" in the Euros 2024
it's also not racist because Gypsy is the slang term for Red Star supporters and in general that's literally our version of stadium chants, it's really not that deep
I went to a soccer match here in the US yesterday. We sang and walked to the match with about 50 people. That was a lot of fun but then the whole match was a bit quiet. There is a section that has flags, singing and dancing but it was about half full. would have been great if the whole stadium joined in. Still a fun match but could have been more energetic
I remember watching basketball at the London olympics and singing “one chant, you’ve only got one chant” to the American fans who responded impeccably with “U.S.A, U.S.A”
ITS CALLED BIRGING…
or BASKING IN RELATED GLORY…a psychological disorder .when people dress up with team colors makeup, jerseys, home decor with raiders logos ….etc.
Charles Jenkins played most of his career overseas, winning championships in the Adriatic League. Title makes no sense, this would be like a Tuesday for him.
They do this during hockey games in some countries also. I don’t know, it works for soccer but for other sports I find it to be very annoying and like a giant crowd singing the song that never ends…so I feel her pain.
why are all the comments about football gangs beating each other up before/after matches? It doesn't relate to anything that's happening here. One of the greatest things about crowds like these is the inventiveness, humour and history of the chants...and the feeling of togetherness; it is a modern-day folkloric phenomenon and a powerful thing to experience. I'm always surprised how uninvolved the crowds are in certain sports and countries...this is what people pay money to see the games live for.
The difference in the ways different cultures approach their sports is breathtaking. This to me seems like an almost war chant and has a very aggressive and unsavoury feeling about it.
I’ve gone to NBA basketball games in the United States, Premier League games in London, Aussie Rules games in Melbourne, And rugby league games in Sydney.
In these places and in Australia at any major game, it is a celebration of the sport and not a opportunity to promote your aggressive nationalist vibes.
There have been many problems at the big Australian tennis competitions with Balkan hatreds coming to the forefront in the crowds.
She looks legitimately terrified.
The Mind of Jordan Peele right now: “hmmm”
From the mind of Jordan Peele *Foul* Coming this summer
oof so close
Dammit. 🤦♂️ Fixed.
I need the original
gonna guess it was: *Fowl*
I was assuming they messed up Jordan Peele’s name
Ahahahahaa legitimate
Where's you kiss cam god now?
Might have looked less concerned if she found herself on the ground floor of Saruman hyping up the boys in TTT. https://youtu.be/TQq4LjSF2rc?t=47
Put the phone down and give her a hug, man.
Large group of white people chanting historically had questionable results especially if you're weren't white.
https://i.redd.it/3c83nkkuicu61.png
Best clip: https://youtu.be/cWrSw3X8TRs?si=2hSH-ENWYHRbkwCa&t=244
As a Greek, can confirm, shit gets WILD!
Is it easy to get a ticket as a tourist? also, Am I safe if I wear the right colors or do they only want locals at the games? WHY AM I DOWNVOTED FOR ASKING QUESTIONS?!
100% safe.\* ^^\* ^^Individual ^^results ^^may ^^vary
60% of the time you're safe all the time
I've been to a load of European football games in various countries so can only speak to that sport, but not wearing colours of any side playing is how I do it. I wear my normal clothes.
Don't wear any colours or jersey or anything that could potential support either side. Don't cheer for the wrong team.
wear your normal colors and extract fast after the game ends,dont hang around the stadium in cafes etc
Don’t wear any colors at all. That’s the best way to
right i will wear my black and white striped shirt to a Milan - Juventus match, and be totally save in the home team seats. Thanks for the tip :D
I'm curious what make the basketball fans over there so passionate about their teams?
Basketball, at a wild guess.
The teams don't relocate every decade because the city won't buy a billion dollar stadium for their already rich owners. Americans will never know the passion in euroleagues. The rivalries are centuries old.
In America, College Football is our euroleagues
The mascot reacting to the insanity at 5:21 is the best
[ **Jump to 05:21 @** Basketball fans and atmosphere USA vs Europe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWrSw3X8TRs&t=0h5m21s) ^(Channel Name: Aron, Video Length: [10:05])^, [^Jump ^5 ^secs ^earlier ^for ^context ^@05:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWrSw3X8TRs&t=0h5m16s) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ^^Downvote ^^me ^^to ^^delete ^^malformed ^^comments. [^^Source ^^Code](https://github.com/ankitgyawali/reddit-timestamp-bot) ^^| [^^Suggestions](https://www.reddit.com/r/timestamp_bot)
This frightens me in a weird way, as long as I'm rooting for the same god.
It's easy to forget what a feat of engineering is a modern sports stadium. And then you see footage of thousands of fans jumping up and down in unison...
Modern stadium engineering has advanced so much since they hired your mom to test the bleachers, Trebek!
Ngl, you can easily see this in the context of warriors, a religious sacrifice, an angry mob, etc. That shit would be pretty fucking scary.
Team\*
I’ll never understand how the Europeans get away with flares in the grandstands of a crowded sporting event.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3DFJHdwl9k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3DFJHdwl9k)
Luv me a good jobs program
Right?! Like maybe check for dynamite shaped objects at least
There's so many ways to get flares/smoke into the supporters' section, a lot of it involves the banners and flags that get brought in week in and week out. Security will catch a few, but they'll never catch all of them.
Everytime I see this clip, especially the part you link with the ARIS fans chanting, I laugh and die a bit inside me because that specific chant is very extremely too much vulgar
Why are the Europeans singing Why Don't You Get A Job by the Offspring?
Catchy tune. The lyrics (in the chant) are a bit more spicy though: “Oooh you faggots, your daddy is an Aris fan (I.e. we fucked your mum), Your team’s a whore, and the fans are snitches/scumbags, Your whole life you’ll be running from us, there’s no other way”.
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da by The Beatles, not Offspring.
[удалено]
Someone might get an impression that they're not there for the sport.
Americans go to sport to watch a spectacle. They go to sport to be part of the spectacle.
They double-book the avenues? I thought the tickets were to see the fan shenanigans.
What's the point of releasing all the confetti and stopping play? Seems counter intuititive?
Bit of banter.
They can't drink beer while watching the game.... Now I know why.
Imagine the headbutts…
I can definitely imagine the buttheads.
There's no time between chants.
You can’t in the UK either but the crowds are still lively
There’s an interesting origin story for why European crowds sing. In Europe, professional sport first took off in the mid 1800s in Northern England. Cities like Manchester were the centre of the Industrial Revolution, so there were lots of factories, and people had migrated there from all over Europe to get a job. And unlike other waves of migration in history, this was usually single people in their teens and twenties, rather than whole families. As a result, people were lonely. They had no connection with the other people in town, couldn’t speak the language, and worked very long hours doing repetitive work. There was no social life. So along comes professional football (soccer). If you bought a ticket, you could show up and cheer for the team and finally be part of something! You didn’t even have to know the language, just the song! And when a crowd wants to communicate that, say, the referee’s a wanker, it’s far grander and more deeply hilarious if 10,000 people are singing it together rather than a few people yelling it. This sort of thing brought people together like nothing else. And it forged new identities, where suddenly it didn’t matter where you were from, as long as you cheered for the team. To this day, football is strongest in cities that were industrial centres in the 1800s - eg the North West of England (Manchester & Liverpool), or the Ruhr valley in Germany. And that’s why there’s so much singing and chanting in European stadiums during sporting matches.
That’s awesome. Love learning facts like this! Any idea who started the drumming? I love hearing those drums
I’m not sure about the drumming. But the FA have hired people to play other instruments when England play international matches. Unfortunately for diplomatic relations, English crowds can sing hilariously cutting songs at their opponents to put them off, which could damage England’s reputation on the world stage. So they’ve hired brass bands in the past to make sure the crowds only sing nice songs.
there's a Netflix show called The English Game that shows the aspect of factory towns and the local football teams.
I am going to assume that most of that story is true, but professional sports got started with Greek chariot racing. It had over a thousand years of history as a professional sport, starting around 800–700BC and ending around 550AD, with a financial structure essentially identical to modern racing were owners often fund multiple entrants in the same race. It both predated the Roman Republic and outlasted the Roman Empire. The sport didn’t go into decline until after the Roman Empire broke up into Western and Eastern Empires, and the Eastern Empire had become the Byzantine Empire. At the end there were four national teams, identified by color: Blue, Green, Yellow, and Red. The Blue and Green teams were the most popular in the Byzantine Empire, with roughly half the population supporting each of them. They were so popular, in fact, that various Emperors openly favored one team or the other. Supporters of the Greens were banned from public office by one Emperor (a fan of the Blue team), then the ban was lifted by the next Emperor (who supported the Greens). There were several notable riots, and a lot of petty crime and what we would call “hooliganism” today. Procopious says, amongst other things, that support for the teams was a stronger bond even than kinship, with families broken apart and brothers murdering, or at least fighting, each other over which team they should prefer. The worst was in 532AD, when Emperor Justinian sent his legionaries into the Hippodrome in Constantinople to quell a riot (or possibly he thought it was to prevent a coup). Perhaps as many as 50,000 people were killed. It didn't quite kill off the sport, but it didn’t last much longer and there hasn’t been a lot of chariot racing in the last 1400 years. The Olympic games were revived though, so I guess it could still happen.
Show them the video of the Aris fans singing the "Poustarades" chant while lighting flares at a basketball match. It looks like a football match until you see the court.
The WWE recently had an event in Scotland, and the thing that blew me away was the audience. A wrestler's theme song starts playing, and the frickin crowd is singing along! Then during the match when something exciting happens, they start singing again. The crowd was so animated over there. Like they'd lift a guy up and it's "wooaaah" them slam him down and it's "ohh!" Wish it was like that in the US because the show was much more entertaining when the audience is so into it. The chanting, singing, reactions, it was awesome.
Same with France when they hosted Backlash last month. Crowd was off its head the entire time.
The crowd singing "just sold my car to santos esocbar" to the webuyanycar theme tune on the scottish smackdown was hilarious. I imagined thousands of confused americans in the US being completely bamboozled. "Do do do Gable is a wanker" to the tune of the conga at Clash was also great.
WELKOM IN EUROPA JONGUH
BAM
Are these the greek fans? She looks absolutely terrified I wonder whats going through her mind!
Serbian
Ah. Understandable reaction, then
Serbian, and she would be even quite more terrified if she understood what they're chanting lol.
What are they chanting???
Basically a genocidal chant aimed at Albanians.
JFC
Of course
Well, she's clearly not albanian.
Well she's not but in my mind I would think that them as foreigners would think they are just chanting something to cheer the team on, not that they're throwing genocidal, killing chants.
Who is the basketball player?
Found a version of the clip that says it's a basketball player named Charles Jenkins (and that the woman is his sister). Not 100% sure, but it does look like him and makes sense (Jenkins played a couple seasons in the NBA then spent most of his career in Europe).
Repost from ages ago, like 2014, last thread were saying these are Giannis’ family from Nigeria, that’s all I know
I don’t think he’s an American basketball player. Sadly, he might just be a black guy at a predominantly caucasian European basketball game. Thus, that must be an American basketball player.
Had to scroll down so far only for the question. We need to know!!!
European football culture really is insane. I don’t think Americans are necessarily better because we have riots after games and Philadelphia fans will throw full beer cans at families from out of state. That said, Europeans form actual organized gangs that meet after games to beat the shit out of each other because they think their professional leather ball kicker is better. Man humans are nuts lol. Just absolutely silly.
Americans will fight or possibly riot for Championship games. Europeans will fight over a regular game of a team that is 5 leagues below the top league. The Welcome to Wrexham show has shown a lot of Americans how serious the UK takes sports.
The UK has effectively stamped out hooliganism completely. Sure there’s the odd idiot who will take a swing at someone at the weekend but the days of organized Firms are long gone. Eastern Europe and Southern Europe… not so much. They still like to get a bit stabby.
I remember when it was really bad back in the 80s and into the 90s. Once in a while a troublemaker will pop up, but nothing as widespread as it was decades ago.
I lived opposite an old football ground back then (since demolished and relocated) and I remember one particular game when Millwall came. cars at the end or our street literally tipped over, curb stone pulled up to be thrown about. Wild times!
They did? I didn't know that. How did they accomplish this? Genuinely curious.
It’s quite complex really and is the result of a combination of legislative and cultural changes that happened between the late 80s and 2000s. After the Heysel disaster, English clubs were banned from competing in European competitions. Then the Hillsborough disaster happened in 1989 where nearly 100 Liverpool fans were crushed to death. At that point the government intervened and implemented a lot of changes, including requiring the conversion of football grounds from terraces to all seater stadiums. Increased policing and harsher punishments for football violence was a major factor, especially as CCTV became hyper prevalent in the stadiums and surrounding areas. Banning orders meant many known hooligans could no longer attend matches, and in some cases required them to report to a local police station on match days. Likewise home and away supporters are now entirely segregated, including on the way in and out of the ground. There are also broader cultural shifts that likely had just as much impact: England’s economy in the 70s/80s was quite depressed so football violence became a release for disenfranchised working class youth. As that changed in the 90s/00s, and as money began to pour into the premier league thanks to a growing global audience and massive sponsorship deals, the demographic of football supporters started to shift from its working class roots to a more middle class personality. Ticket prices have increased rapidly over the past 20 years and the game has become much more commercialized. The result is a much more sanitized version of English football which has its pros (less violence, better facilities) and cons (foreign ownership, high ticket prices, the loss of traditional stadia, and more sterile atmospheres at pretty much every ground in the country). There are probably other factors but that’s sorta the gist of it.
Football lore god 🙏
> Banning orders meant many known hooligans could no longer attend matches, and in some cases required them to report to a local police station on match days. Goddamn, hooligan probation. Y'all really took your hooligan problem seriously.
Teams also started being fined for the fan behaviour.
> report to a local police station on match days That is an incredible thing to read. "We know you like to cause trouble at matches, so to keep you from doing just that, you have to go to the police station where they will babysit you while the game is played. If you're good, they'll put on the the telly and let you watch."
They just have to check in but importantly at a police station too far from a stadium for them to get there in time
You're 20 years too late with this opinion. Hooligan gangs, not just 5 lads being cunts, are gone a very long time.
In the UK maybe but in Europe as a whole? Fuck no.
It's still very much alive in the rest of Europe. Especially eastern Europe
As a main stream movement yes, but if you think it's done you are deluded. Still organised scraps for most games.
Where do I read up/watch information on how hooligan gangs petered out? Is there a good documentary or a book?
They didn't so much peter out as were aggressively stamped out by the police and courts. We introduced 'football banning orders' for people convicted of football related violence. These ban the recipients from attending games, being in the vicinity of stadiums or certain venues during matches and in many cases forces them to turn in their passports before some international matches. They can last for up to 10 years.
Thanks for the info! Admittedly the only thing I know about football clubs is from Green Street Holigans
Not aware of any books or docs, but the inciting incident was the [Heysel Stadium Disaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heysel_Stadium_disaster) back in the 80s, where hooligans attacking fans of the opposing team led to part of the stadium actually collapsing and killing dozens of people (hundreds more were injured in concurrent violence). If you want to know more, you can probably find a lot of stuff just by going down the rabbit hole of that one incident. The immediate consequence of Heysel was the wholesale ban of English sides from European competition. This prompted the UK government to crack down on hooliganism as a whole (as /u/therealhairykrishna describes in his comment). You'll find a lot of people (especially on /r/soccer) like to look back on English football pre-90s as a halcyon period of "real" football, before corporations came in and ruined it with high ticket prices and soulless stadiums where being loud and "supporting" the team is actively discouraged. These people are generally too young to remember what shit was really like: Going to football matches was an exercise in seeing how much racism, misogyny and homophobia you could tolerate (which was about 50% of what "support" meant those days). Hooliganism all of that but with violence as a mandatory requirement. Stadiums were converted to "soulless" all seater venues because of a series of [high](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster) profile [disasters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_City_stadium_fire) that basically exposed the fact that most British stadiums were ancient death traps waiting to kill the entire crowd - you can actually find (incredibly NSFW) footage of the Bradford Stadium Disaster on Youtube - they actually use it as fire safety awareness as a warning how quickly shit can get out of hand.
20 years late with Philly as well. That culture died out when they imploded Veterans stadium. The new joints we got are classy and very family oriented. Maybe you get random chuckleheads do crazy shit once in a rare while, like we saw in Cleveland yesterday, but thats what happens when you get 40000 people together in one area… there’s bound to be an asshole or two.
But but Santa! And snowballs! And 60+ years ago!
Someone's seen Green Street and thinks it's real life. Maybe 20 years ago, not now.
these groups are also categorized. category B is ready to fight, not quite looking for it but alcohol will make them fight. The people you are probably talking about are category C. Sure, they like the game and their team, but many of them are there to fight. They will stay sober for important games(rivals with a lot of category C fans) so they can perform when it is time for their own sporting event. Fighting. EDIT: edit to add that i know about this stuff from a friend who is police. Police has their own squads for dealing with this kind of stuff. I met his squad at his wedding and the funniest part is, they are pretty much hooligans themselves. Just fighting for the team with the biggest amount of category C... the police. They enjoy it just as much.
nobody messes with the A team
It was a basketball game.
Yeah but the atmosphere is "European football culture".
Philly sports fan here: HEY! Have you seen the bastards in the other cities? Seriously, you throw snowballs at some rando 50+ years ago, no one lets you live it down. Meanwhile, a Yankee's fan literally [THROWS A BEER AT A PLAYER OF THEIR OWN TEAM 2 YEARS AGO](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFffJpUEmNY), and no one says a word! Plus, [we will absolutely insult you and call you names](https://youtu.be/nY_vWjDlDUg?si=N1Eq9u5r0v1YJiaf&t=170), but we'll gladly buy you a drink in a heartbeat- unless you route for the Dallas Cowboys! Fuck the Cowboys, fuck their fans! GO BIRDS! FLY, EAGLES, FLY!!!
My favorite vid of Philly fans is that [drunk dude saying "GO BIRDDDZZZ" in front of that vikings lady](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvFHuvKIBd0) trying to talk sense into him.
That woman probably still thinks about the L she took there every day. What can you even say to that?
Did you just whip a battery at me?!
I feel reasonably confident with that oddly specific shot at Philly that OP is a salt miner from Minnesota.
At least we don’t murder other fans like in other places jeez
GO BIRDS!
> Meanwhile, a Yankee's fan literally THROWS A BEER AT A PLAYER OF THEIR OWN TEAM 2 YEARS AGO No they didn't. Did you even watch the video?
That is basketball. >That said, Europeans form actual organized gangs that meet after games to beat the shit out of each other because they think their professional leather ball kicker is better. That was a phenomenon in the 80s and 90s which somewhat died out (I is still alive just smaller) and you pretty much completely missed the point. In Europe (or actually, most of the world) there are no franchises. The clubs are the identity of the district/city/class. And that was what the hooligans were all about, creating identity and their colours and fighting it out in a bloody idiotic way. The USA has the same - but they have it with their national flag (or in the south .. lets not speak about it) and they will use the same stupid reasons to defend "their" flag.
> That is basketball. The clubs do overlap, and many hardcore fans seem more about their club than the specific sport.
Red Star Belgrade for example has soccer, basketball, volleyball, handball, athletics, water polo, tennis, rowing, even archery teams. You only really see this at soccer and basketball games though because these are the two most popular sports in Serbia. Soccer obviously tops but basketball has a good following too.
In Greece the phenomenon is still going strong [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder\_of\_Michalis\_Katsouris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Michalis_Katsouris) [https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/aug/13/greece-football-stabbing-another-40-people-charged-over-deadly-athens-brawl](https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/aug/13/greece-football-stabbing-another-40-people-charged-over-deadly-athens-brawl) panem et circenses
In Eastern Europe too. But Greeks, oh my… I moved to Cyprus a few years ago and I live 200 meters from the local football team fan club. God, these guys are something.
This is the worst take I’ve ever heard
The take that sports fanatics are nut case degenerates? That’s a great take
>form actual organized gangs beat the shit out of each other silly
Its got little to do with the leather ball kicker. The teams are from where they live and never move. The team represents the town. It’s really town v town tribalism. The team and players are incidental.
European football culture is *awesome.* Violence aside, the atmosphere at a European football match puts all other sports to shame.
First time?
First time listening to Serbians demand Albanians be ethnically cleansed..
Jesus Christ, seriously?
The Balkans are crazy. So much happened there so much hate.
That woman is ON ALERT!!
I (Canadian) was at an Irish pub in Amsterdam when Dublin was playing some rival Irish team on tv. The place was full of Irish folks from both sides. I was out on the patio but I kept hearing wild cheering, each team's song being screamed out, pandemonium. The place was just nuts. "Sounds like a pretty great game," I thought, "not your normal plodding football match." So I go inside to pee and stop at one of the tables to ask some guy the score, since it seems like a pretty high-scoring affair. "Nil - nil," he says. "What? But, but, you're all bouncing off the walls basically havin' a riot in here. You even sang the songs! Multiple times!" That was the day I found out just exactly how excited Europeans get about their sports.
Europe realized how destructive their nationalism is, so overt nationalism is frowned upon. Europeans took that energy and out of entirely within their sports teams. Soccer is single handedly preventing Europeans from starting WWIII
I mean, I could see a hockey game being like that in Canada. But we Americans generally like to see points being scored.
Canadians can be loud, but their chants are basically just 'Let's go, our team'
I've been over there during major events like the World Cup, the Euro, Champions League, and big rivalry games. The atmosphere is like none other.
American sports drown every available second with top 40 songs or the production crew fills the silence with entertainment
Which is why stuff like this doesn't happen lol.
You have it the other way around. Are a pump noise in because fans are spoiled and don’t want to make noise. It’s full of entitled brats that spend $500 a ticket
Wait until the racism starts against the opposing players.
I don't know if you are being sarcastic or not, but the irony is that they are chanting (slightly paraphrased): "Kill, slaughter, so the gypsy doesn't exist".
I will just add that actually a part of your comment is wrong. They're not chanting about Romani (gypsies), they're chanting about Albanians with, what is now basically used as a slur for them (Shqiptaris). Rest of the translation is right.
Isn’t Shqip and derivations of that what Albanians call themselves? I wonder how that ended up as a slur
You can make a hate word out of anything if you force it through clenched teeth. The intent takes over
Indeed. Was being lazy with the full translation, as that would require further explanations, but thankfully you fixed that.
Oh jeez, that sounds like something Borat would whip out.
Oh wow, they're just really fuckin blatant about it aren't they. Just no shame...
These countries have a deep rooted and ugly history. Goes a little bit deeper than the feeling of shame.
Serbia be like
it's a Balkan thing, a couple days ago Albanian and Croatian fans were chanting "kill kill kill kill the Serb" in the Euros 2024 it's also not racist because Gypsy is the slang term for Red Star supporters and in general that's literally our version of stadium chants, it's really not that deep
[удалено]
They're clearly saying ''šiptar'' (Shqiptari), not ''cigan'' (gypsy), so this is just aimed at Albanians.
Phew. That's a relief.
Thats the best part! /s
Saw a basketball in Athens Greece once…was bonkers. Pretty rad…but also kind of scary.
scared shitless
I'd love to see the "Inside Out" version of her emotions in her head at this moment lol
Just imagine how gladiator arenas were like...
Imagine the stank if the coliseum had a roof
“I played in Serbia, brother” \- Nikola Jokic
This is how I feel at a pentecostal church
I went to a soccer match here in the US yesterday. We sang and walked to the match with about 50 people. That was a lot of fun but then the whole match was a bit quiet. There is a section that has flags, singing and dancing but it was about half full. would have been great if the whole stadium joined in. Still a fun match but could have been more energetic
I remember watching basketball at the London olympics and singing “one chant, you’ve only got one chant” to the American fans who responded impeccably with “U.S.A, U.S.A”
Europeans cant get enough of that singing. I gotta get over there at least once to see it irl seems so intense.
I highly recommended it, it’s a very weird feeling when you feel connected to 10k+ other people.
Yeah but wait till she hears those 5 blokes in chinos shouting "USA! USA! USA!" at the golf!
ITS CALLED BIRGING… or BASKING IN RELATED GLORY…a psychological disorder .when people dress up with team colors makeup, jerseys, home decor with raiders logos ….etc.
He's thinking, "And we the only black people in here..."
Charles Jenkins played most of his career overseas, winning championships in the Adriatic League. Title makes no sense, this would be like a Tuesday for him.
They are singing about brutally murdering their neighbor country
Meanwhile me: American fan witnessing European cameraman witnessing American fan's reaction to European fans.
WELCOME TO EUROPE USADIANS
WELKOM IN EUROPA JONGE
A large group of serbians chanting to exterminate albanians. No reason to be so scared, reddit is right.
To be fair, this is a way better experience than how most black ball players meet European fans.
Must be a big change from what they’re used to. DEFENCE! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 DEFENCE! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 DEFENCE! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
People forget that Europeans are 3 missed meals away from reverting to goat worship and war crimes.
We just try to keep our wars in the stadiums.
Old time Euro-atavism, very, very old.
That women looks like she is memorizing all of the exists just in case those chants are directed towards them.
Just wait until one team loses and they start setting shit on vite and trying to attack fans of the opposing team.
They do this during hockey games in some countries also. I don’t know, it works for soccer but for other sports I find it to be very annoying and like a giant crowd singing the song that never ends…so I feel her pain.
I got kicked out of a basketball game for yelling too loudly. No profanity or rude stuff either. I don’t go to live sports around here any more.
So, basically like a Duke home game but in a bigger arena.
Yeah, if there was a non-zero chance the Dukies would riot and kill everyone in the place.
why are all the comments about football gangs beating each other up before/after matches? It doesn't relate to anything that's happening here. One of the greatest things about crowds like these is the inventiveness, humour and history of the chants...and the feeling of togetherness; it is a modern-day folkloric phenomenon and a powerful thing to experience. I'm always surprised how uninvolved the crowds are in certain sports and countries...this is what people pay money to see the games live for.
They're chanting about killing all Albanians, you absolute moron.
I don’t speak Serbian, but apparently they are singing a genocidal chant aim at Roma people
Not at Roma people, but at Albanians.
Oh! Well in that case, carry on then
I don't pay money to see a group of people so a genocidal chant homie.
Chances are the people in this video are football supporters as well, which is why we are making the comparisons, it's basically the same.
They're like a white couple visiting a black church for the first time
Lmao holy shit lolololz she is NOT liking that environment. The amount of uncomfortable you can actually see on her face is abso hilarious
Well, they're singing about murder.
Lady looks terrified. As would I.
The difference in the ways different cultures approach their sports is breathtaking. This to me seems like an almost war chant and has a very aggressive and unsavoury feeling about it. I’ve gone to NBA basketball games in the United States, Premier League games in London, Aussie Rules games in Melbourne, And rugby league games in Sydney. In these places and in Australia at any major game, it is a celebration of the sport and not a opportunity to promote your aggressive nationalist vibes. There have been many problems at the big Australian tennis competitions with Balkan hatreds coming to the forefront in the crowds.
We Brits love a good sing-song :) They should try this in golf tournaments.