Other Games 2025-26

[LeeB]

I don't think the rise of Ultra culture and the rise of the far right are unrelated.

[Dogtanian]

I think it's very strange, and I know cultures are different, but I do feel they're missing out on a lot.

Watching the Freiburg fans last week, it all looked impressive, but they didn't seem connected to the game. A good match gets you feeling involved and part of it, you react and respond to what's happening, and your reaction can resonate with others and have an affect on the players, too.

[LeeB]

I think it's very strange, and I know cultures are different, but I do feel they're missing out on a lot.

Watching the Freiburg fans last week, it all looked impressive, but they didn't seem connected to the game. A good match gets you feeling involved and part of it, you react and respond to what's happening, and your reaction can resonate with others and have an affect on the players, too.

Spot on, it's distracting and unrelated to events on the pitch, like some poorly programmed ambient sounds on a football simulation.

[German James]

Watching the Freiburg fans last week, it all looked impressive, but they didn't seem connected to the game.

That's the thing! Apart from the need to identify with something (i.e. the club), their behaviour has little to do with the game. I've been in away-ends where people have berated me (gently) for not joining in with the turning around and crouching down nonsense, instead of watching the match! And, as it's all so regimented, it does appeal to ring-wing wankers.

[RamboandBruno]

Yea I find all ultras stuff odd. PSG fans, and others, strike me as not even being involved in the games sometimes. The ebb and flow of we’re playing well, we’re playing shit etc, like when we were battering them in the second half at VP last year, the drum keeps on beating, the blokes with tops off keep on bouncing, mindless shit.

[Dave]

A few decades ago I wrote a fairly lengthy university thing about Italian Ultra culture, and I think a big part of why we don't get it is that for them the actual football is secondary to the supporting. You're there to be part of the culture first and to watch a game of football second.

Here, people are there to watch the game and the fact that other people are also there to watch the game shouting the same stuff and singing the same songs isn't as important.

[RamboandBruno]

A few decades ago I wrote a fairly lengthy university thing about Italian Ultra culture, and I think a big part of why we don't get it is that for them the actual football is secondary to the supporting. You're there to be part of the culture first and to watch a game of football second.

Here, people are there to watch the game and the fact that other people are also there to watch the game shouting the same stuff and singing the same songs isn't as important.

Thats an interesting point.
I would say though there is a togetherness and cultural identity formed within actually watching the match. Take the Forest game as an example, in Villa Park there was a collective cultural identity with thousands of disparate souls, built around our desire to win the game and then feeding and feeding off the performance. This feels very different to being with a group of people making noise inside a football ground, that feels totally disconnected more than secondary to the actual match being played.

[Dave]

A few decades ago I wrote a fairly lengthy university thing about Italian Ultra culture, and I think a big part of why we don't get it is that for them the actual football is secondary to the supporting. You're there to be part of the culture first and to watch a game of football second.

Here, people are there to watch the game and the fact that other people are also there to watch the game shouting the same stuff and singing the same songs isn't as important.

Thats an interesting point.
I would say though there is a togetherness and cultural identity formed within actually watching the match. Take the Forest game as an example, in Villa Park there was a collective cultural identity with thousands of disparate souls, built around our desire to win the game and then feeding and feeding off the performance. This feels very different to being with a group of people making noise inside a football ground, that feels totally disconnected more than secondary to the actual match being played.

Definitly. I'd rather do it our way. But I'm guessing that's in part to it being the culture that I / you / we are used to rather than it being objectively better.

And who knows, maybe there have been flat, quiet Sunday afternoons at VP where a huge amount of noise that's unrelated to what was happpening on the pitch might have jolted the team out of their torpor.

[Monty]

Yeah, the chant-leaders and drummers or what have you literally spend the entire time with their backs to the game. They don't react to a damn thing that happens on the pitch, that's not what they're there for.

[ian c.]

... and the weird coreography stuff! If I go to a Mainz home game (sadly rare nowadays) I stand in the home-end but away from the main block and I can see the fans (they're not all Ultras) in the middle being ordered to sing, bounce

It's similar at Bayern. They have some lads down the front who choreograph most of what happens (the same thing happens at the ice hockey too).

I saw a post somewhere last week from a Freiburg fan who was disappointing with the Villa fans last week because we didn't have many flags.

[Dogtanian]

... and the weird coreography stuff! If I go to a Mainz home game (sadly rare nowadays) I stand in the home-end but away from the main block and I can see the fans (they're not all Ultras) in the middle being ordered to sing, bounce

It's similar at Bayern. They have some lads down the front who choreograph most of what happens (the same thing happens at the ice hockey too).

I saw a post somewhere last week from a Freiburg fan who was disappointing with the Villa fans last week because we didn't have many flags.

More cups than flags is what they say about us. In German, though.

[cdbearsfan]

Yeah, the chant-leaders and drummers or what have you literally spend the entire time with their backs to the game. They don't react to a damn thing that happens on the pitch, that's not what they're there for.

Complete waste of a life, IMO.

[aj2k77]

''Ultras'' make noise they don't create an atmosphere.

[Monty]

''Ultras'' make noise they don't create an atmosphere.

Yeah I'd love to defend it in some way but, really, it does suck. Was at a Treviso rugby game recently sat right next to the Ultra section, and it has a genuinely dampening effect on the rest of the crowd. Self-indulgent, counterproductive bullshit in my view.

Actually, very Italian Bloke Behaviour, but that's a story for another day.

[German James]

I saw a post somewhere last week from a Freiburg fan who was disappointing with the Villa fans last week because we didn't have many flags.

To be fair, I do like the big flags, from a distance. But the fact that anyone behind them can't see the pitch is proof of what we're saying!