Mourinho’s right, your fans are sh**e

How to get the best atmosphere in an elite football stadium by Neil Barnett

Everyone, at some stage or other, complains about atmosphere at football matches in big clubs’ home stadiums.

I was pitch host for all Chelsea games at Stamford Bridge for over 25 years. When I was walking out of the press room into the players’ tunnel post-match about 11 years ago, José Mourinho, just going into the dressing room, stopped and yelled at me about how bad ‘your supporters’ were on the day. Ah, so they belonged to me and not to the club. Or him!

Half-an-hour later he went into a press conference and complained about them. Opposition fans still use that as a put-down chant today.

“Mourinho’s right, your fans are shite…”

This season, Enzo Maresca has complained about home support, although that was more of a philosophical complaint as uprisings were voiced over tactics.

Obviously, watching football has changed down the decades. We’ve lost terraces when it was necessary to claim your place early in order to join the singing, screaming throng, and singing would be started by many just to entertain themselves until the teams came out.

We’re not able to take alcohol into the spectating area anymore.

Now there’s been an extraordinary expansion of marketing people in elite clubs who want to control every moment of match attendance and turn the supporters’ experience into general entertainment and supporting the business, rather than intense emotion and lifelong engagement with the players.

So here are my 11 points (plus one substitute) to start improving match atmosphere. You will note that singing sections in the crowd is not one of them. That won’t overcome the challenges hammered down by the new general entertainment attitudes.

1. Shut down the PA system pre-match
When the teams take to the pitch, the primary relationship should be between the supporters and the players, NOT between the supporters and the stadium announcer. Announce the team selections BEFORE the players come out, then have them written up on the screens. Allow the supporters to SUPPORT, to take on their rival supporters with songs and chants, and to sing out the names of the players going into battle for the cause. Feed this relationship by shutting up everyone else from the club.

2. Shut down the PA system pre-match up to kick-off
NEVER play music up to kick-off then silence it as the referee blows his/her whistle. Everything goes dead. A vacuum! It’s a comedown, not a climax. NEVER EVER have a countdown to kick-off. It’s not a children’s party. It’s a sporting contest in which the supporters of both sides are heavily engaged. Let the supporters support, let the build-up be from the ones who make the atmosphere organically, not manufacture it badly.

3. Shut down the PA system before pre-match and at half-time
Don’t try and be television, or YouTube. Take my word for it, there are three ways of talking to an audience. Firstly, on television and radio, also through a phone and laptop, you’re addressing the listeners one-to-one, as if you’re in the room conversing with them. Tones must be soft even though energetic. That doesn’t communicate in a stadium. Secondly, in a theatre your projection and gestures have to be more extreme, so when you’re looking to one side of the auditorium you’re still relating to the other, still heard, still understood, still sharing emotions. Lastly, when you’re in a stadium, only one thing matters: YOU HAVE TO HIT THE BACK ROW. That’s why… Nelson… Mandela… spoke with… lots of pauses in his big addresses. You cannot hold a conversation with 40,000 people. Never conduct an interview in a stadium. Never give long monologues. It’s got to be all sound-bites and punch lines. Don’t ever try and entertain the ‘customers’. Just help liberate the supporters. They provide the atmosphere, you don’t. And that’s why at half-time I used to walk ex-players round the perimeter of the pitch, getting up close to supporters. It was a stadium way of saying: “Hi, how are you? Thank you for your support down the years.” It was giving to the supporters rather than inflicting on them. And giving them the chance to communicate with old friends, allowing them to be proactive. It was a reliving of old relationships. It was enjoying old atmospheres. And it was hitting the back row.

4. Shut down the PA system post-match
Those marketing mogul wanna-bes get that music on post-match for a good old singalong. Hideous! Now that the players do the right thing at the end of games, and go on a lap of gratitude, let the supporters and them communicate. The primary relationship. Let the songs be sung, the chants be chanted. It’s not about the product, it’s about fostering this relationship. And those players, as vain as you and me, as egotistical as you and me, will love their name being sung. Even the ones who pretend that they don’t. Especially the ones who pretend that they don’t.

5. More never-do stupid productions
Yes, the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium sound system is a new level for football, but it still doesn’t make videos with commentaries or voice overs work. Once again, you cannot hold a conversation with 40,000 – or in Tottenham’s case 60,000 – people. No-one listens. And no-one builds up the atmosphere to the game while this excess noise is inflicted on them. Videos of old action are fine. Screeching sound isn’t.

6. Don’t mix up your events
There’s a reason live music gigs last two hours or so. There’s a shape to them, a build-up of communication between performers and audience. So when you have a big football match, don’t stuff a rock band in to play one song, or even three like Linkin Park at the Champions League Final, because the communication won’t have time to build. And people don’t go to football to be an audience. They go to be supporters. Don’t take their support away from them. And don’t have djs playing dance music at half-time. It’s a football club not a music venue. Feed the support, don’t kill it with second rate entertainment.

7. Never have empty seats
Yes, club owners and club business people have to maximise income by having corporate seating which by price rejects a lot of supporters who would likely intensify the atmosphere, but that is the reason there shouldn’t be too many corporate seats. It is a bad idea for the club to have too many high-priced seats not filled – even if the few of them filled bring in more income than would be otherwise – because it both kills the atmosphere and enjoyment around them, and thins it in the rest of the stadium. It’s bad business management even if not bad financial management.

8. Never ever tell the supporters what to do
Pitch announcers should never say: “Give it some noise!!!” … “Let’s hear it for the boys!!!” …. or show they’re the Number One supporter to follow: “Come on you (… whatever the team)!!!” Atmosphere-building support is organic, not switch flicking.

9. Give it time
Going back to less match production will need the atmosphere to start growing again, but it won’t happen over-match. A note to the business people. When you make all your redundancies for economic ends, have a look at the match management people on the non-football side. There must be loads of them.

10. Treat everyone like a supporter whether one or not, even if a tourist
Don’t have young welcomers brought in saying: “Welcome to (whatever club)” when they find themselves without knowing saying it to people who have been going there decades. All supporters know they’re just students getting a temporary job. It’s empty and pathetic. Don’t have stewards saying as supporters go in: “Enjoy the match…” It’s not about enjoying it, it’s about taking part in a victory. And don’t have, as I discovered at Chelsea recently, a neon sign for people leaving the stadium saying: “Thank you for coming to Chelsea”. It’s my second home, it’s my addiction, this is a totally alienating message from some pimply marketing idiot. If you want a neon sign, kid, try: “See you next time, up the (whatever team)”.

11. And finally, the tactics
Don’t create a team which plays out from the back with slow tempo, which keeps passing backwards, which keeps getting pressed into tight corners, and which keeps losing the ball in its own half. That will create an atmosphere alright, a hostile one, hostile to you Mr Head Coach!

Basically, the entertainment needs to come from on the pitch, not from off it. The positive atmosphere will follow.

12^th point
Never ever, ever kill the build-up to kick-off by introducing the players one-by-one as they walk out, like Fifa is doing in the Club World Cup. It’s a team game. The team comes out as one. Not one-by-one. One-by-one delivers a slo-o-o-ow motion entry when it should be two sets of gladiators gearing up, tension exploding. And one-by-one leaves a pitch host trying to create atmosphere on his/her own, trying to find 22 different ways to say a name to tens of thousands of people who should be relating to the players, not to the host. It’s puerile. Just shut up!