1) Liverpool: You’ll Never Walk Alone

When the jubilant, vindicated and visibly relieved families, friends and supporters of the 96 Liverpool fans recently emerged from the inquest that confirmed what they’d all known for 27 years, there was only ever one song they were likely to sing. There can scarcely have been a more sincere and heartfelt performance of a football chant that is always capable of prompting goosebumps regardless of one’s football allegiances.

While Liverpool supporters are widely credited with having been the first body of fans to replace random shouting and rattle-waving with the singing of actual songs at football matches, there seems to be some debate over whether their signature tune, one of the first to be included in their repertoire, was first sung by them or Celtic fans. Originally written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the climax of their musical Carousel, the song was covered by the Liverpool band Gerry and The Pacemakers in 1963.

In his autobiography, Anfield Iron, Liverpool legend Tommy Smith wrote that Gerry Marsden, the band’s lead singer, had presented Bill Shankly with a tape recording of the song. Smith recalls that hearing the song for the first time on the team bus during a pre-season tour was akin to a religious experience for Shankly, who promptly told his players that the club would have to adopt it. “Football writers from the local papers were travelling with our party and, thirsty for a story of any kind between games, filed copy back to their editors to the effect that we had adopted Gerry Marsden’s forthcoming single as the club song,” wrote Smith. “The rest is history.”

In 1964, on the day Liverpool sealed their first title for 17 years with a 5-0 win over Arsenal, Panorama sent plummy-toned reporter John Morgan to the game for a now infamous special they were doing about the city’s contribution to the cultural zeitgeist. In the subsequent broadcast, he could be seen standing in front of the heaving, swaying mass of humanity that was the Kop, looking slightly scared as he marvelled at their version of She Loves You and Anyone Who Had A Heart by local turns the Beatles and Cilla Black.

“I’ve never seen anything like this Liverpool crowd,” he said. “The 28,000 people on the Kop begin singing together; they seem to know intuitively when to begin. Throughout the match they invent new words, usually within the framework of old Liverpool songs, to express adoratory, cruel or bawdy comments about the players or the police. But even then, they begin singing these new words with one immediate huge voice. They seem, mysteriously, to be in touch with one another, with ‘wacker’, the spirit of scouse.”

While Morgan’s foray into the field of music criticism is unlikely to have given Lester Bangs any sleepless nights, his dispatch from Anfield did expose the phenomenon of the Kop to a wider audience and prompted supporters of other clubs to begin aping their Scouse counterparts. It seems Liverpool fans can rightfully lay claim to having been the creators of terrace chanting. In a football culture increasingly soundtracked by raucous rage, they remain synonymous with the uplifting and optimistic standard to solidarity You’ll Never Walk Alone. Half a century after appearing on Panorama, their poignant commemoration of the 25th anniversary of Hillsborough earned them a spot on another high-browed BBC current affairs programme. BG





2) Leeds United: Marching on Together

The Righteous Brothers’ Unchained Melody was originally released as a B-side and so was one of the greatest love songs of all time: Marching on Together, a rousing, almost arousing, paean to Leeds United. It first appeared as the flip side to the single (cunningly entitled Leeds United) that was released before the club’s ultimately triumphant appearance in the 1972 FA Cup final and was written jointly by Les Reed (yes, that one! If by ‘that one’ you mean the chap who penned a string of hits in the 1960s and 70s, not the one who managed Charlton Athletic and is now Southampton’s director of football) and Barry Mason, who belongs in a football music hall of fame, or at the very least a rowdy football-themed pub, having also composed Delilah, the murder ballad at which Tom Jones had a stab before Stoke City fans made it famous.

Since its release Marching on Together has become the Leeds anthem, its blend of jauntiness and faux militaristic bombast melodically capturing the power of a crowd mobilised in the name of fun and communal pride. Lots of rivals fans won’t admit it but nearly every club looks forward to a visit by Leeds United fans and not simply because it means a cash bonanza for the hosts: it also generally means an uplifting experience for all, especially when Marching on Together gets its inevitable airing. Mind you, Peterborough United fans who admire spontaneity preferred one of the other songs that the visiting fans came up with on the spot back in 2008, when Gary McAllister was the Leeds manager and Peterborough local council chose match day as the perfect opportunity to stage a campaign to raise awareness of the importance of sexual health screening. Leeds fans, always happy to help promote a worthy campaign, chanted during the game: “We’ve got McAllister, you’ve got chlamydia”. Not as enduringly catchy as Marching on Together, however. PD

3) Norwich: On the Ball City

Norwich fans have a fight for survival on their minds right now and we’re not only talking about the team’s attempt to avoid relegation. A campaign is under way to restore the club’s anthem, On The Ball City, to its original form lest the uniqueness of the track be blurred by rash or slapdash singing. It’s not that the tune has been altered or the words tampered with it, the problem, as some fans see it, is that the song is now being sung so quickly that the words cannot be distinguished. And the words are lovely. This, after all, is regarded as the oldest recorded football chant in the world, having been written in the 1890s by one Albert T Smith, as far as anyone can tell. Smith went on to become a director Norwich City when it was founded in 1902 and the club adopted the song, which had been originally written for a local team, possibly Norwich Teachers. As Jon Punt and Andrew Lawn, who set up the #slowdownOTBC campaign, wrote in the programme before Norwich’s recent defeat by Sunderland: “On The Ball City sounds like no other chant you’re likely to hear on the terraces elsewhere … the song features none of the tub-thumping one-upmanship which characterises many chants and instead focuses fully on the club.” Nowadays the Carrow Road crowd tends to only sing the chorus and too often reduce the words to indecipherable hollering. Which is a shame because who wouldn’t want to hear a full clear rendition of this song at the correct tempo? PD

In the days to call, which we’ve left behind, Our boyhood’s glorious game, And our youthful vigour has declined With its mirth and its lonesome end; You will think of the time, the happy time, Its memories fond recall When in the bloom of your youthful prime We’ve kept upon the ball Kick off, throw in, have a little scrimmage, Keep it low, a splendid rush, bravo, win or die; On the ball, City, never mind the danger, Steady on, now’s your chance, Hurrah! We’ve scored a goal. Let all tonight then drink with me, To the football game we love And wish it may successful be As other games of old, And in one grand united toast Join player, game and song And fondly pledge your pride and toast Success to the City club.

4) Various: celebrating being on the road to nowhere

As noted by the Norwich fans above, the leitmotif of most chants involves one-upmanship. Oft-times opposition supporters shun tit-for-tat song duelling because they know they can’t win. So a different retort is needed, a defusing one to which the only sensible response is a chuckle: “we lose every week, we lose every weee-eek, you’re nothing special, we lose every week” or the always diverting: “Let’s pretend we’ve scored a goal … ”. And then there are the fans of teams who are so boringly mediocre that even gallows humour seems inappropriate – instead, unity in glorious nihilism is strength. Let’s choose Barnsley as an example, although the following chant has also been belted out by fans of Sheffield United, Bristol Rovers and many others in recent years: “We’re not going down, we’re not going up, we’re Barnsley FC, we don’t give a fuck.” PD

5) AFC Wimbledon: Where were you when you were us?



It was the draw everybody wanted and nobody wanted: MK Dons v AFC Wimbledon in the second round of the 2012 FA Cup. Founded in 2002 by Wimbledon supporters enraged by a proposal to rip their club away from them and relocate it to Milton Keynes, AFC Wimbledon were enjoying their second season as a Football League club when fate and the Football Association tombola conspired to pair them against their estranged former selves in an FA Cup tie.

Far from viewing it as an excellent opportunity to bloody the nose of a club they refer to as Franchise FC, many AFC Wimbledon fans were appalled when news of the fixture broke. Two members of the Football Association-appointed panel that sanctioned the grab and relocation of their former club had infamously warned Wimbledon fans that “resurrecting the club from it’s ashes” and renaming it was “not in the best interests of football”, but they had gone ahead and done it anyway, earning many plaudits as they played their way from the Combined Counties League to the Football League in under a decade. Now these were confronted by the prospect of having to muddy their spats on a visit to the ground of a club most held in contempt and whose existence many of them refuse to acknowledge.

Plenty of tension surrounded a game that was always likely to struggle to match the hype surrounding it, but it passed off fairly peacefully. Unable to contain themselves, a crowd of AFC Wimbledon did pour on to the pitch when Jack Midson cancelled out Stephen Gleeson’s excellent opener for the League One side. On a day when AFC Wimbledon fans had clubbed together to pay for a plane to fly over Stadium MK trailing a banner reading: “We are Wimbledon”, the visiting supporters were left desolated by Jon Otsemobor’s late, late winner but did provide one moment of high comedy. Surveying the home fans who had turned up to support the club that had been stolen from them, they struck up a decidedly existentialist chant of, “Where were you when you were us?” BG

6) Various: Seven Nation Army

In 2001, while sound-checking prior to a White Stripes gig in Melbourne, Jack White stumbled across a seven-note guitar riff he liked the sound of and enhanced by playing it through an effects pedal to give it a growling bass feel. “I thought if I ever got asked to write the next James Bond theme, that would be the riff for it,” he would later reveal. When no invitation from Eon Productions was forthcoming, White’s simple composition provided the foundation for the White Stripes’ 2003 single Seven Nation Army, which became seared on the consciousness of a wider sporting public as it was played in sports venues all over the world. Depending on your point of view, it eventually reached its pinnacle or nadir by becoming the official Uefa-approved goal music for Euro 2012. So how exactly did the music from a song about one angry young man’s sense of isolation become so ubiquitous a tribute to triumph?

The supporters of Club Brugge and Roma seem to have a fair claim to being responsible. In a Milan bar before a Champions League game, supporters of the Belgian side heard Seven Nation Army and enjoyed the signature riff as much as its composer had two years previously. Roaring along in lager-fuelled accompaniment, they brought it along with them to San Siro, before exporting it back to Bruges in the wake of their surprise 1-0 win. It quickly became a staple standard at the Jan Breydel Stadium, where it was soon introduced as the club’s goal music.

The following year, Brugge hosted Roma in the Uefa Cup. Impressed by their hosts’ use of Seven Nation Army, Roma fans adopted it themselves. Their club’s captain was also smitten. “I had never heard the song before we stepped on the field in Brussels,” Francesco Totti later told Dutch newspaper Het Nieuwsblad. “It sounded fantastic and the crowd was totally into it. I quickly went out and bought one of the band’s albums.” Praise indeed.

Having been embraced by various Serie A terraces, Seven Nation Army became the Italian side’s unofficial anthem at World Cup 2006 and at a Rolling Stones gig in Milan that July, Alessandro del Piero and Marco Materazzi were invited on stage and led an audience singalong. The chant quickly went viral, the riff behind it becoming a staple at all kinds of arenas in various continents, where it was occasionally adapted to pay homage to particular players whose names contained the requisite number of syllables. Then Uefa gave it their seal of approval, the football equivalent of that time David Cameron announced he likes The Smiths. Thanks Uefa.

And Jack White’s take on this cultural phenomenon? “Nothing is more beautiful than when people embrace a melody and allow it to enter the pantheon of folk music,” he said. “As a songwriter it is something impossible to plan. Especially in modern times.” In short: it’s not ‘The Referee’s A Wanker’ but it pays the rent. BG