Well a few days ago I met another real Chelsea fan in person for the first time. Only problem is he's a Michael Ballack fanboy and annoying as hell. So, I was wondering, what do you guys think the 'typical Chelsea fan' is like? What about other teams, what are the stereotypes for their fanbases?
Drunk, loud, obscene (Our celery song says it all), drunk, and drunk. Did I mention drunk? Off topic but at my newspaper gig one of the editors was a Chelsea fan also. Devoted. Fun for the both of us but he and I are surprised that the newsroom didn't attempt to kill us, especially after the Bordeaux match when we were beating them 4-0. Lot of yelling at that one. Shame I only got to work with him for one semester as he graduated after that.
Meh, typically "fans", or plastics as you might say. Couldn't tell you who Zola was (this is all too common in the US).
good question and a tough one to answer tbh the club has undergone several changes over the years and some, not all, of the fanbase has changed with that you would have to consult with some of more senior members such as Clan, Andy and Dr. I to get a good reference of the club prior to the info I will provide below as it based on my opinion and what I experienced and they can add a lot more and confirm and or/deny some of the info I will add, but from my generation which includes the info from fern Sr and gawd only know how far be he can go- probably to the days of Fatty Foulke. I will begin with the late 60s to early 70s when the club was really begining to take a shine again and became the Kings of Kings Road. The club attracted a fashionalbe and famous crowd mixed with the regulars, many of whom were just honest, hardworking folk (mostly all men) who gave a piece of their weekly wage to support the club. Not too much crowd trouble and this was still an era were there were not really away ends and there was a time when away fans stood in the Shed- soon to change. The fan during this time period was mostly not a glory hunter, although I suppose they could have been a few interested to see some of the tasty bits of stuff who wanted to be seen at the Bridge. For the most part it was an all male, loyal following with few if any plastics as Spurs, Liverpool and Leeds were still more successful clubs and more trendy to follow. Through the 70s and into the early 80s the club began to experience as change as the club struggles on and off the pitch. Several good players left and a new element of fan began to rise with the hooligan element taking over. More working class, disassociated younger fans combined with several of the loyal fans and soon the Shed became a place where one had to earn the right to stand and interesting meetings with opposing fans soon became common place. The 80s were really the Dark Age for the club. The only success the club enjoyed was winning the old Second Division twice while the likes of Liverpool and still Spurs (wankers) drew the fans, Chelsea for the most part was not a popular choice. You didnt choose to be a Chelsea fan in those days, you were a Chelsea fan. Quite a lot of hooliganism along with the continued rise of the embarassing support for the C-18, NF and the some of the BNP lot. Being a Chelsea fan in those days was not even close to what you see these days and no one would think of being a Chelsea plastic. Bates took over in the early 80s and we finally had a small amount of security in owing the ground. Crowd trouble was regular and your average Chelsea fan was once again a diehard, mostly male hardcore fan and you wouldnt find a child, no smoking or family section anywhere near the Bridge. The only females at the ground had more tatts and less teeth than your average lumberjack and you wouldnt want to cross that type of lass, trust me. The 90s the club began to change. Along with the Prem and the all seaters rules after the Hillsborough disaster, the crack down on hooligans the club became much more family friendly. More kids, more lasses and the club became a ground where one could go to and not worry about getting a smack from the police or the constant aggro from the previous generation. Still some crowd trouble but things were changing fast for the club and some new found success brought a new element of fan to the club. The expansion of the Prem games onto satellite TV also helped along with some big name managers (Hoddle, Gullit and Vialli) and of course the likes of Zola and Co. Many new fans, especially those from other countries began to follow and support the club along with the older element with the majority being long time fans, ala Clan and Co, while the hardcore hooligans watched from a far. The racism element of the club soon disapeared as family freindly football was introduced to the club. Cue the RA era and the invasion of the plastics. With success come plastics- nothing will ever change that. Of course this rubbed several fans the wrong way including the old timers but so be it. Several new fans got into the club, some good some not so good, many only following the club because of the trophies or a high name signing, others following the club as they became more exposed with success. The club and the fans have changed some over the years so the term "typical Chelsea fan" may be one which is difficult to pin down. Perhaps typical Chelsea plastic would be more appropriate for those fans who only followed the club due to success and are now eagerly awaiting the Man City bandwagon to come roaring by. End of the day- I suppose it doesnt matter when you first began supporting the club as long as you are prepared to stay through the tough times- because they will come- and get used to Chelsea being more frustrating than the most infuriating woman you have ever dated in your life; then you are a Chelsea fan.
Great post. I learned a lot and it's nice to see the information posted by someone who's experienced this stuff first hand.
Speaking of, do you think we could get a thread for all of us to hang out in until Man City gets better? It's kind of an awkward transition phase for all of us
TCS, I'm not going to explain to you why this post is funnier than funny to me. And what about Michael Ballack fanGIRLS? Are they allowed?
Good summary of the era I began supporting the club. Outside of the games themselves being a Chelsea fan in the 80's meant being the only Chelsea fan in your school. It meant being surrounded by Liverpool, Spurs, Arsenal, Everton and Forest fans. There was little good news to read about in the papers for us, we were rarely on telly and only slightly less rarely were we on the radio (and only when we were in Division 1, which wasn't every year). Reading about us in the paper (used to read what my Dad scrapbooked as I was only a midget) and you resonated with the names more than anything, on a few occasions we were a pictured write up so I actually got to see what they looked like (usually Dixon of course). Hard to explain how it is to support a club you never actually see (Dad refused to take me until some of the worse hooligan element was out towards the end of the decade). We never had replica kits in the shop (and we were only 40 minutes west of London) and outside of Shoot or Match magazine and the immortal Panini sticker albums, I never knew what our current kit was and what players like Mickey Droy looked like (this was actually a bonus!). The most common place to see us was actually the old Grandstand vidiprinter!! But I did know that our ground was called Stamford Bridge (from the age of 5 or so) and that every time the radio went there (Breaking from the inevitble Liverpool game) my dad would start stressing and more often than not swear (when we'd conceded once again). This does of course give you perspective but I wouldn't recommend it as a supporting era over todays era of internet and majority of live games. I mean now we get upset if we're not on FSC - a far cry from being upset when our match write up was a two paragraph, pictureless affair! I guess what I'm mostly getting at is that there's not typical fan as such, but maybe there's a typical fan from a certain era (as Uncle Fern says). The club is going to be viewed differently by someone who went to the Bridge from the 50's and 60's, differently to the 70's crowd, the 80's mob and those from the 90's Pre-Z and from 90's Post-Z up until the Roman times. Within each of those groups there may be lots of commonality, but across those groups there is far less in common.
well he *might* be, but anything can happen. We could all get hit by a meteor before then! I definitely won't guarantee it. Allrightythen.
You know, when I hear someone mention Zola....I automatically think they're a wikipedia Chelsea fan LoL. I always feel that's the escape goat people use when they want to prove that they've been following the club for a long time, and in all honesty, I much rather someone just tell me I just started to follow the club, then give me the old "I've been following from the Zola days". At my work, I get to interact with a lot of tourist, so of course I get to speak with many English tourist, and I always use cricket or football as my small talk. So if I see someone with a Chelsea kit, I used to ask them how long they've been supporting the club, and 60% of the time, they'd say "since the Zola days" or "before the Zola days", or something with Zola. I got tired of that response, so I've just usually bring up some sort of Mourinho reference as my opening line. Note: These are usually people in their late teens to late 20s. If I find a older fan, they'll go into stories regarding things I've never heard of, until their wives drag them away.
I hear that all the time as well, but honestly that's where a lot of the newer fans started supporting the club. There's nothing wrong with it really. The next time someone tells you he or she's been following since the Zola days just ask them what other players they liked from that era.
Keep in mind that we also became more successful around this period and thus were on the television more and also more international stations began to pick up and broadcast the games around this time period and it makes a lot of sense that we would experience rapid growth.
I started following Chelsea in 2002, so I consider myself from the Ranieri era rather than the Zola era (which started in 96, when all I knew was that the US had the World Cup, whatever that was, and now we have the summer Olympics too).
Started in the 70's myself, the usual way for nippers in that era. Everybody that could, played football, those that couldn't, played cricket I had the same problem as a youngster, nobody would take a lad of 7 or 8 to a game on a regular basis, and it wasn't anything to do with the aggro really - which in many ways, was actually worse in the mid 70s than in the mid 80's - it was jus tthe whole drinking culture that was involved/part of the game. Remember, this was a vastly different era.Football was a mans game, a mans escape from the mundane of life, the nagging women, the worry of employment, a place to go with mates and just enjoy yourself...and of course the drinking! Anybody that brought a girlfriend, sister, wife, any female at all, was usually told right bluntly not to do it again....although, there were exceptions, but very rare. Now, whilst I was able to go into the lounge with the older lot, they didn't want to as the best laff was in the bar, plus, I had to be minded at the game. Terracing was terrible for anyone older trying to keep an eye on somebody younger, you usually lost them after as little as 15 mins with the constant crowd surges and the endless queues for the bog or chuck. When I got into my teens though, it was better, I could actually go and stand with schoolmates by myself, just had to meet at a designated place after the match - which was always, without fail, outside a boozer.The Rising Sun was popular, so popular in fact that it was easy to make an appearance, be seen, and bog off to Waterford Leeds were huge back then, as were QPR and trouble was always around when they were at home.Millwall was the , no doubt, worst back mid 70's, hands down.Mental, the lot of them. I can really remember from the time we re-opened the track to greyhound racing and we actually had many write ups in the rags as we had a team of kids that were, albeit second division players, quite good. It's funny, but your posting about the write ups and the lack of pictures reminded me of events that I had long forgot. Oh how sad were those three and four line 'match repots' in the back pages. My old man was nutter for the papres on a Sunday, used to get them all for the different reports, and of course, I read them with relish each and every week. The crowds back then, were a nice mix of both older and younger supporters, although it was quite obvious as the 70's came to a close, that our fans base was not only thinning, it was getting younger every year.Anybody tha twore a replica shirt got bollocked, badly. The players would come and chat with you, both inside and outside the ground.It was quite common, especially in West London, to meet players, of many clubs, in a local boozer. Some of them were right karnts in real life too What was also interesting was how the whole music era and the change from the differentt fads also had an affect on the support you saw on the terraces. Mod was BIG when I was quite young, then SKA..by the time I was going by myself, it had turned to pure Punk/Oi and finally to the casual. As the latter fad took effect, the crowds started to get younger with the change of the flavour of music.Young, late teen to early 20, white and usually from middle class and below income.This stayed a constant for a while, probably a good 8 year reign. Troublesome econominc times, Thatcherism and strikes, coal prices falling and an end to the steel boom say the rise of the more well known hooliganism era. Now, I still maintain that the trouble around the grounds was actually worse in the mid to late 70s, the difference here was, it was more localised in that era. With mass unemployment, the mans game (for it was even more so a mans game then) began to attract a different type of Chelsea fan. Punk has made way to casual, the rise of nationalism throughout the country had brought about a venue for the more mouthy of the disenchanted with lifs lot to actually congregate and speak together.Chelsea was easier than most at the time to get away with it at first, as we weren't one of the bigger clubs and thus (before it all went tits up) we were not having the mass police protection that the Arsenals and the Spurs had. Following the path of least resistance, we made a good staging area for soem of the more radical and violent minded of the time.Of course, like a weed, once it got rooted, it was going to be a bastard to remove. The typical Chelsea fan of that time was still male, still white, but totally intollerant of anything that didn't agree with his way of thinking.If possible, the booze culture actually picked up and going to the boozer before a game to have a bit of a laugh, actually turned into a ritual where getting drunk was normal.If we were too drunk to get into the game, no problem, we just poped down the tube and bricked the away support that was stupid enough not to come by protected bus. Now, the difference between the 70 and the 80s, is that in the 80s this was happening all over the country. A typical Chelsea fan? No such thing really, it has, and will continue to, change with each decade and the events that define it.
great post Clan. In regards to this piece- I always found it interesting that the Youth element of football was largely ignored in regards to the hooliganism associated with the game. I can remember many a ruck and plenty of trouble beginning because some arsehole youngsters stirred things up- of course I may have been quite familiar with some of those young thugs...
In my experience, Chelsea fans are either A: chubby bald pasty british blokes or B: young east indian Canadian girls. or C: me