In the olympics a common chant for the US team is U-S-A, U-S-A. What national chants do other countries use?
In sports in the US teams are normally given names Yankees, Giants, Bears, Bruins, etc… but it seems in other countries like European soccer they just go by their city name, is that true or do sometimes teams have “names”.
Are sports stadiums financed by taxpayers?
Finally in your country do people “tailgate”? Meaning set up grills and cookers and have these big parties in the stadium parking lots?
We have teams named after mostly animals and birds but some named after groups of things - Raiders, Steelers, Knights.
Often the government chips in for stadiums.
I assume because of our propensity to copy aspects of American culture, particularly the uncultured elements, they will soon be popular in some shape or form. However most sporting venues don’t have vast parking areas that would enable it. At most decent modern stadiums the parking is multi-storey stuff.
ETA. I’m forgetting the Melbourne Cup carnival where massive car park feasts and piss ups have been going on as long as I can remember.
Pakistan, Cricket stadiums are usually owned by the local cricket associations, which may or may not get help from the local, provincial and or Federal government.
As for tailgating, whiles its a carnival atmosphere at most matches I have been to, at least at my local stadium, no fucking way. :eek: There is enough parking problems without people using up even more space.
Many British soccer teams do have nicknames- I just don’t know how widely the nicknames are used.
Arsenal is the Gunners. Tottenham Hotspur is the Spurs. West Ham is the Hammers. But you rarely or never hear these nicknames in American media coverage of the teams.
Nitpick, Tottenham Hotspur are just “Spurs”, never “the”
Double nitpick, over here we would always say “Arsenal are” or “Tottenham are” never “is”.
Small points of detail I know but there you are, what are sports for if not arguing about the finer detail?
On the wider point, the nicknames are certainly in wide circulation and in general conversation you’ll probably hear them used just as often (if not more) as the official names. Some unofficial nicknames have asserted themselves as well, “mackems” for Sunderland, “monkey-hangers” for Hartlepool, “Smog-monsters” for Middlesborough, and “c*nts” for Millwall to name but a few.
Tailgating?..no, there is very little room for that in UK car parks and there is precious little cooking to be done in the boot space of a peugeot 206 hatchback. Pub and a pie tends to be more our style.
As for stadium financing, it is pretty much all private money now I think, though government grants may be offered for some redevelopment work and favourable purchase/lease terms may be offered for the repurposing of stadia built for other events (i.e. Man. City’s Etihad stadium was originally built for the 2002 commonwealth games)
I have heard tales of tailgating at Rugby Union games, especially at “Twickers”, where the car park is likely to have as many Range Rovers as Peugeot 206s. Not so much hotdogs and beer, more houmous and Bordeaux.
If it was an official club jersey, it would read “Sunderland AFC”, I think. Of course, if you wanted a shirt proclaiming your love for the Mackems, you could probably find one.
Just the country’s name, typically. In the case of England, the chant is sometimes lampooned as “Ingerlund” (which only works if you have a non-rhotic accent).
French football fans have been known to chant “les Bleus”, but since they only discovered football about 30 years ago I’m not sure that it counts.
In Scotland we chant “Scotland!” or sing the song “Flower of Scotland”. Or perhaps “We’re shite and we know we are!” to the tune of “Go West”.
Many European teams are named after the city where they’re based, or the area within that city. But there are exceptions: Arsenal would be the most obvious in the UK. My team plays in Glasgow, Scotland but is called simply “Celtic”. Although it’s sometimes referred to as “Glasgow Celtic” that’s more just for clarity - the city name is not part of the team name. Oh, and it’s pronounced “Seltic”, or “Sellick” in local accents.
Not as a rule, no, but some local governments do offer grants to sports teams if it’s felt that there would be a general community benefit in building a new stadium or improving an existing one.
Most UK soccer stadiums with which I am familiar have little or no parking at all. You walk there from the nearest train station, bus stop or whatever. Many fans arrive by chartered bus, but there aren’t many places to park your own car nearby. So no, not much tailgating.
You can, but then “Mackem” is the demonym for natives of Sunderland in general. The official nickname of SAFC, used by the club and its supporters, is “The Black Cats”.
In American sports, when people talk about a major professional sports team, they frequently name the team’s city AND its nickname: New York Yankees, Dallas Cowboys, Boston Celtics, Pittsburgh Penguins, etc. But just as often, they’ll just say the nickname. After all, what OTHER Yankees or Celtics would people be referring to?
In British soccer, most times, people just name the city. There are a few exceptions, though. Like the Blackburn Rovers and the Wolverhampton Wanderers. I’m not sure what’s different about those teams.
No, generally. (I’m sure someone will be in to provide a list of exceptions as long as our collective arms, though).
My job takes me to quite a few local sporting events and the club usually has a sausage sizzle going on, often with hamburgers and steak sandwiches too. Pies and sauage rolls are popular too. They also sell cold drinks and a couple of the more organised clubs have liquor licences as well. All of this stuff is very reasonably priced (sausage, onion and bread is about $2, for example). The idea is the money raised from selling snags/hamburgers/refreshments goes to the club’s general expenses, grounds upkeep, buying uniforms for the junior team, and so on.
Having a big party in the carpark would be depriving the club of this revenue, which would be (say it with me now) Un-Australian. That and there’s generally local council laws about having barbeques in non-designated places (ie outside of back yards or parks with the proper facilities) because, well, a lot of Australia is flammable, especially in the summer.
I can’t speak to “professional” level games because the incentives required to get me to voluntarily attend such an event are astronomical indeed, but I’ve never heard reports of it happening and I can’t see it being a thing here at the moment because A) there’s no room in the carpark, B) something something something Public Liability Issues, C) it would impact the concessions inside the event which wouldn’t suit the organisers/event owners.
Again with the “the”…it just sounds so weird to my UK ears, nothing would mark you out as a foreigner as quickly as that sentence construction.
Where the are no competing teams in the same city you do indeed tend just to use the city (or town) name. The examples you give aren’t real exceptions though as most people would call them simply “Blackburn” and “Wolves”
“City” and “United” are simple shorthand for the main Manchester clubs. Liverpool is obvious and “Everton” are another Liverpool club (located just a few hundred yards apart from each other).
A further factor mitigating against tailgating in the UK is the weather. The football season covers autumn, winter and spring. Conditions which are bearable in the partial shelter of a stadium aren’t really conducive to an outdoor party atmosphere.
In fact, the weather and the price of urban land being what it is, any car park by a stadium would be a grim multi-storey concrete effort, rather than an open-air space. But the big factor is logistics, as mentioned - people just don’t drive to games, so there’s no big car park, so there’s no space even to consider it.
Mostly the nations of the UK play separately in international competitions. In the Olympics specifically they compete as Team GB, bringing the whole of Great Britain and Northern Ireland together under one banner to celebrate their joint achievements. There is no Team GB chant.
