‘I am grateful that god hates the reds’: persistent values and changing trends in Israel football chants

Fans’ chants in sports stadium have, over the years, become an integral part of the spectator experience. While chants add colour, atmosphere and a demonstration of fans’ support for their team, chants also play a significant role in defining fans’ perceptions of their team’s identity and its differentiation from other teams. An analysis of football chants will therefore shed light on fans’ deep-seated worldviews of their own role, their team, the sport in general, and even life itself. The purpose of this study is to find whether and how the content of the chants changed over the years, as a reflection of wider social and cultural changes of the society. Based on an analysis of Israeli football chants over years, the study identifies key changing and stable perceptions of football fans. Findings point to several values that have remained stable over years, including fans’ attitudes toward their team and its rivals, and their attitude toward God, alongside recently emerging phenomena such as radicalization of hatred toward others and attitudes to the commercialization of sport, which reflect social and cultural changes both in the world of sports and without.