“I come in peace, to give penance for winning three titles that should be rightfully yours”
Outrage at Arsene Wenger’s treatment at the hands of Man Utd fans during Arsenal’s visit to Old Trafford seems to have percolated up from Gunner blogs and online forums and entered the mainstream.
Marina Hyde writes in the Guardian about the disgusting pedophilia chant that Arsene Wenger was subjected to which has been going on for years. It has become part of a collection of Manchester United chants selling on Amazon.com and Play.com. Wenger seems to have become inured to it, not reacting to it even though the same word is used in French and English. Maybe he believes that way the chant will die down having lost its power to provoke. But it apparently has not.
I don’t think in a million years, Sir Alex Ferguson has been treated the same way by Gunner fans. And yes, tasteless chants about the Munich tragedy and the Hillsborough disaster are equally deserving of opprobrium. But these chants are well publicized and equally well condemned. It is these chants that have little institutional backlash that attention needs to be drawn towards.
To be fair, club authorities have appealed to fans to stop using the chant but nothing seems to have come of it. David Gill, Utd’s CEO seems to have had enough and is planning to address the issue in a fan forum. Sir Alex has also condemned it in the past but he may need to do it again because his words carry more weight than that of a stuffed shirt.
I went to Amazon.com and Play.com but the chants seem to have been taken down. But here is a link to the words. Stay classy, Man Utd fans.
3 comments on “Man Utd fans told to zip it over disgusting Wenger chant”
It’s about time someone did something about this. I’ve known about this chant for many years, and I never knew why no one did anything to crack down on it. I mean, it’s not as bad as the kind of things you’ll hear at Stamford Bridge or Anfield during derby matches, but it’s still totally inappropriate.
However, your comment that Arsenal fans treat Ferguson better than United fans treat Wenger is completely wrong. I don’t know if your memory will go back that far, but a few Arsenal fans were ejected and banned from the Emirates two years ago for the abuse they were giving Ferguson while he was on the sidelines. They were throwing things at him, and saying things far worse than “pedophile.”
Every fan likes to believe that their team has better fans than other teams, but it’s just not true. Arsenal have an unacceptably large fan base of skinheads and neo-Nazis, but when a club plays out of London, there’s not much you can do about it. Hell, even Osama Bin Laden is an Arsenal fan. Those things aren’t a reflection of Arsenal, they’re a reflection of their popularity, and their status of being the most successful club from the biggest city in Britain.
So, while United should do something to crack down on this and a few other chants that I find distasteful, it’s just untrue to claim Arsenal fans are any better.
I also don’t think this incident is comparable to City and Liverpool’s Munich chants, or Chelsea and United’s Hillsborough/Heysel chants. I mean, Wenger has never had any kind of accusations made towards him, so really, the pedophile chant is just something that is intended to be funny because it is absurd. Now, I don’t find it funny even in the slightest, but it’s different to call someone an offensive name than to sing songs glorifying the deaths of hundreds of innocent people.
Yes, I remember that atrocious incident at the Emirates but these few dingbats were given their just due. I agree, Arsenal fans do not have the moral edge. Anti semitism rears its head in the derby with Spurs because of their large Jewish base. But that problem is being tackled with reporting of such fans and anti-racism groups that conduct awareness camps. But I don’t think Sir Alex faces the problem of institutionalized chants targeting him. It has been going for years and the problem is we have internalized it to the extent that it does not matter any more. I remember last year when City and United were playing the match in memory of Busby’s boys, the greatest concern for the FA were City fans spoiling the moment with their Munich chants. Such an acknowledgment goes a long way to make such chants unacceptable. It should be the same in Wenger’s case.
Actually, it’s interesting that you brought up Spurs. White Hart Lane was the first venue in which the Wenger-pedophile chant was heard. United fans picked it up from them, as did several other teams across the country who continue to sing it. Spurs actually managed to snuff the chant out years ago, though.
I think you won’t be hearing much more of it at Old Trafford. My main impression from reading Manchester United fan forums is that they didn’t see it as offensive before, but since people they respect have asked them to stop, most probably will.
It’s certainly true that once a chant gets reported on by the media, that’s usually where it gets stopped, so the more reporting on this, the better.
The same seems to be the case with another offensive chant United have about Adebayor in which they sing, “His father washes elephants and his mother’s a whore.” City have been making a very big deal about it, although they’ve been suspiciously quiet when it comes to City’s favorite new chant “Tevez hates all Munichs.”