Complexity and culture creation at the football
Spending the past few weeks immersed in football culture in England and back home at Canada fed my soul. There is so much about football that I love, from the complexity of the game, all through to the culture and atmosphere of the stadium. I have been a dedicated and deeply involved football supporter of the Vancouver Whitecaps (2010-2018, ended over a series of unresolved sexual abuse scandals) and of TSS Rovers (2017- the present). The thing that drew me to football as a kid was hearing Liverpool supporters singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” on the BBC Match of the Day broadcasts when I lived in England in the late 1970s. The SOUND. The sound of a big stadium full of enthusiastic supporters is unreal. It’s not something you are likely to witness in professional sports in North America except in soccer. And being present on a European night, like Finn and I were a couple of weeks ago as Tottenham hosted Eintracht Frankfurt, is absolutely magical.
The essence of football culture in the rest of the world is its organic and participatory nature, from the creation of tifo to the penning of songs and chants. As a songwriter, writing songs for my football teams has been a passion of mine. I especially love coming up with player chants, which are even more meaningful at the lower league levels, where young players ply their trades in relative obscurity, loved only by a small handful of fans.
As a complexity practitioner, I love watching the way football supporter culture ebbs and flows and wanes and flows again. I love the way we try songs out that flat out fail, or we have some instant inspiration that locks itself in as a tradition.
Recently the podcast 99% invisible did a nice piece on football songs, including some deeper history of this cultural practice that I wasn’t aware of. Even though it’s pitched at an American audience, and it is focused somewhat on Arsenal (I’m a Spurs fan, remember!) it’s well worth a listen. It gives us insight about what culture really is and how it really functions.
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