This is where part of my argument lies in using certain songs and chants. While I like the call and response of C'mon You Boys In Blue, it is a straight take from the Green Brigade's C'mon You Boys In Green. Worse, it's not an obscure chant, being new for them as well and going huge all over Youtube because their 6-year old/junior capo leads it. I love Celtic as much as I do the Union, so it's not such a big deal for me, but other people hearing the SoB-version and knowing European football will think it is just us hijacking a chant in order to be more anglophile. Same thing with YSA. Is it really worth all the negative publicity just to shout a stupid phrase everyone else in MLS has done/currently does, and then be the only supporters to take the heat for it? I guess what I'm trying to say is I think we as a collective have to be more savvy when doing things and dealing with people that aren't regular match attending Union fans or SoBs. It's easy to be dismissive and say f-ck it, who cares, the writer was just looking to score cheap points at our expense. It's that mindset though that makes us run the risk of looking like something less than what we really are: the most passionate, hardcore supporters in all of MLS.
horrible journalism. he meets maybe five people who are "skinheads" out of the 3,000 people in the river end and just runs with it. i can't even come up with an appropriate metaphor for how badly he missed the mark by labeling us as "bovvers." whatever. next time a british journalist is at our tailgate and starts talking to me i'm just gonna have to tell him to fcuk off.
Just so everyone is clear, I am the skinhead he's referring to. We made a point to establish that we are anti-racist, including showing him a Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice patch (visible in the photos) and Vandal's Love Football Hate Racism elbow tattoo. The event on the train was COMPLETELY fiction. Never happened. And anything attributed to me is out of context.
He gives us shit for being like other fans, so we act like english fans? who act like italian fans who act like spanish fans who act like scotish fans who act like dutch fans who act like mexican fans. We are soccer fans, and we all act the same. We are all different in the same way. I dont get it. I think no one gave a shit that he was there and he took it to heart.
Who gives a shit what other people think about us? I don't care if people accuse of or ape'ing songs or say we are trying to be more Anglophile. If the chant is good why reinvent the wheel. I wouldn't worry about what some English journo wrote in his boys magazine across the pond. I mean he writes for GQ for franks sake. Do men ever read that magazine for their soccer fix?
If the SOB's options are to be invisible, or to be world reknowned & hated, I'd rather be hated. I don't expect a foreigner to respect us. His writing an expose on us was the greatest form of appreciation a Brit writer could give: recognizing that we actually exist and that we are of some importance to the promotion of the sport in this city.
Irony: American soccer fans, who are taking issue with a British writer who basically called them Euro-wannabes, referring to said writer as a "journo." What the ******** is a journo?
Indeed. I was thinking of the UK article when I walked past a magazine stand yesterday and saw the US version of GQ: Tom Brady on the cover. A quick glance at the contents page showed no soccer article.
I usually have mine covered now and then at away games when I feel like being a douchebag. the guy asked me to throw it on for some kind of hooligan effect I guess. I know I'm a bit late to the ball game here but.... whatever. first off the group that I go with, which is me, bchacha, my brother, and my cousin, on the train wasn't singing. we did not sing on the train. infact the guy who wrote the story, and the guy who took the pictures sat in front of us, and we sort of mocked him for looking like a mixture between a homeless bum, a wanna be mod, and a hipster. not to his face mind you, but amongst ourselves. the guy sat a whole 10 rows or so infront of us too, so when these non existent "big black guys" showed up on the train, we couldn't stop chanting because we weren't chanting to begin with. we were approached in the lot, and asked if they could take our pictures because I looked like a bovver boy out of the old days in england. so I rounded up the guys I go to games with, along with smash the van, and lucas (sorry dude, i forget your username on here ) and we posed looking like "badasses" on the train tracks. the guy asked me and bchacha why we dressed like this bla bla bla. we're skinheads plain and simple. I delved into the fact that I'm not racist, and that I'm working class. the guy was shocked to hear that I wasn't racist, and for some reason that I was working class. he said you know skinheads in england are racist, and OH! you're working class, really? as if either of those were hard to believe. bchacha said he liked the casual / ultra style and fashion. I said I liked the bovver boy style more as it was a part of skinhead culture, and it is my way of life. he merged our quotes together and credited us as one person. he asked us about some of our chants, and we told him them (the ones he said we were chanting on the train.) he also asked if we had any other teams outside of the MLS. it's no secret I'm a huge West Ham United supporter, but I also added that I've been supporting Celtic FC, and FC. Sat. Pauli (from scottland, and germany respectively) just as fervently. me and the kid brother also follow cheltenham town, a league 4 team in england, to which he was surprised. why he described us all as anglophiles I don't know. we had at least a 10 minute conversation on how that's the impression, but most people in the supporters group really aren't anglophiles. I know some people who hate the EPL and watch bundesliga, or La liga exclusively. furthermore he acted as if you have to have stuck 10 people with a knife in order to be a West Ham supporter... ******** that guy, that's some weak shit. and to the guy who was reported as saying "I could do without the skinheads too"... we bring some of the most die hard support to this game. I know there's more than just the 3 of us in 139 that attend these games. that guy should be thankful we're there. although, much like the general public at large, he also probably thinks we're a bunch of racists. as bchacha said, I showed the photographer my SHARP patch, which is actually in one of them pictures, and my anti racist football elbow tat. people hear and see what they want to. I can't change that.
You're right, there is a lot of fact there, but it's not the facts are offensive. It's the egregious fiction that was spun out of misquotes and out-of-context scenarios that were placed throughout the article to belittle American soccer supporters and portray us as either over the top wannabe's or dispassionate intellectuals who follow the sport because it isn't "mainstream". The reporter is a piece of garbage and came here to write a very specific kind of story, and whether he found the quotes and facts he was looking for or not, it didn't matter because he made them work for him. Not only that, he included "quotes" of SoBs bad mouthing other SoBs over their particular clothing style for what I can only assume as no other reason but to turn members of the group against each other.
While we are a large group and therefore we are comprised of people with different backgrounds, different styles, different ages, and different levels of enthusiasum the writer seemed to focus only on certain segments of our group and then used a broad brush to paint us that that particular group represents all of us. As I was reading the article I kept thinking to myself this isn't the Sons of Ben that I've been an active part of for the past 3 years. I find it rather funny that he spends all of his time researching this article even going as far as traveling with some of us all the way to Columbus and back and this is the opinion that he came up with about who we are. I want to echo what some of you have already said that he came over here with his opinion already formed about who we are and then proceeded to focus only on certain groups of people and quotes (or even misquotes) to support his stereotypes. While aspects of the article may be correct the overall theme and tone is not. In short, he does not understand us at all.
I meant to bring this up as well, but forgot to. I thought this was a classless move. though I'm assuming it was taken completely out of context, just like everything else was
Shit dude, who is to say like some other things in that piece that he didn't just fabricate it completely.