Everybody’s Sweethearts
Or how the Irish show us how chanting is done.
So, as everyone knows, football isn’t just football. It’s watching the game with your gals and mates, drinking some beer (for most of us), and having a good night out. It’s also about cheering on your team together; for the British it’s beating and get beaten to the pulp; and for the Irish (both IRL and NIR) it’s singing. And that makes them Europe’s most entertaining fans.
Social media have been loving the jolly and mostly drunk fans, who have an endearing way to give some positive contra to their British neighbours who behave rather badly (shame on you fellow British — ya mama taught ya better, did she not?!).
And so while the official news are flooded with English violence (and Russian, to be fair), social media focuses on the nicer side of things. To prove my point have some examples:
Here you can see them singing against the (equaly peaceful) swedish fans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Znw7Da1n6c
Here you can see them seing off their team — together with the sweish fans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0xdgNH7gvo
Here you can see them singin with and for the french police: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmdGzDxd3RA
And if you’re still not convinced, look at this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY0ZViogpdo
There are already ‘Best of Irish Fans’ videos on Youtube and it pops up in the search bar once you type ‘Euro16 Iri…’.
It actually makes me kind of happy to see that there still are people who can simply enjoy an event like that and have a good time. I am allways really sad when I see fan violence — either from England (cause, hell, it’s everywhere) or from Germany (I’ve been living near Cologne ever since we moved here, and we have a ‘derby’ of some kind there every other week) — cause to me it seems so pointless. This year it’s actually so bad that the good news about peaceful fans don’t even make the cut anymore. I haven’t seen anything about this on the big newspapers and news programms (correct me if I’m wrong — I also don’t have a TV so online content only to base my thesis).
But, yeah, that’s this weeks post. And in that sense: Stand up for the Irish fans. :)
