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Article about Scottish vs Norwegian supporter culture


Sindre

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Surprises for me there are Ireland higher, and Germany lower than I would have guessed.

Well done to England supporters for what seem to be routine qualifiers.   Maybe they are part of their success?

And well done to France.   Oh, I can remember the day (not so long ago) when we seemed to outnumber them in their own stadium :bouncy:

 

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10 hours ago, Grim Jim said:

Surprises for me there are Ireland higher, and Germany lower than I would have guessed.

Well done to England supporters for what seem to be routine qualifiers.   Maybe they are part of their success?

And well done to France.   Oh, I can remember the day (not so long ago) when we seemed to outnumber them in their own stadium :bouncy:

 

England play all their home games at Wembley and generally seem to have no problem in either selling it out or coming close.

Our average in the Euro qualifiers was 45665 which if that was repeated would have seen us in 5th place in that table.   

It dropped by about 10,000 though.   To re-iterate my point regarding quality/attractiveness of opposition.   

For the Euro qualifiers we got 59239 at Celtic Park for the ROI game on a Friday and had two sell outs at Hampden against Germany and Poland on a Monday and Thurday night respectively.   Our two games against the group "minnows" saw, 34719 against Georgia at Ibrox on a Saturday and 34255 against Gibraltar on a Sunday at Hampden.   

Clearly for that campaign the "Week of football" didn't impact on our home attendances.   What we did have though was attractive/quality opposition in the ROI and Germany - I'm not using quality or attractive to describe the ROI's style of football obviously - and we were in with a shout of qualification until the last set of games.  There were also three countries ROI, Germany and Poland who brought significant away support, however for the two games at Hampden, had we restricted the away allocations, I suspect we'd still have sold them out.

Compare that to the last WC qualifiers.  One "glamour" game against England which sells out.    First home game is a disappointing home draw with Lithuania in front of an equally disappointing 35966 on as Saturday night - so no "week of football"  excuse there.   That result set the tone for the first half of the campaign which saw 20435 against Slovenia on a Sunday and 26371 against Malta on a Monday.   

The final group game though saw 46773 at home to Slovakia on a Thursday in the last home game.  What had happened, after a terrible start - which would prove to be our undoing - we turned things around and were in with an outside chance of qualifying for the play-offs.
 

 

 

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On 6/19/2018 at 1:09 PM, Sindre said:

Hello!

My name is Sindre Leganger and I work as journalist for Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten. I'm writing about the supporter culture for our national team. We haven't qualified for a championship since 2000, and the support for our team is currently not strong. However - If I've understood correctly, Scotland has not qualified for a championship since 1998 (when we were in the same group!). Yet the Tartan Army stands strong. I'm trying to understand why that is. What are you guys doing right, that we are doing wrong? Who should I talk to? Can you help me with contact information?

Hope hear from you, and have a great day!

Hi Sindre

Good luck to Norwegian national team.
Lovely country and fans / people - would love to see them at a major tournament again.
Maybe you can play Scotland again 🙂
Had great fun drinking with Norwegian supporters in Glasgow.

A few answers / ideas

1) Scotland vs England is the oldest international football fixture in the world.  Historically I think Scots always valued the national team ?
Prior to the 1970s beating England at football was always much more important than World Cups etc.

2) Scottish club football is dominated by the old firm (rangers and celtic). Two massive teams which are much bigger than the rest.  None the less the national team has always offered something more glamorous for supporters of the smaller teams.  Football is also the main sport in Scotland.

3) Politics - the national team has been a focus of national identity.  Long before we had a devolved parliament the Scottish football team was a symbol of our nationhood.  The UK is a kingdom of 4 nations.  Scots like to remember this.

4) Geography.  Scotland is a small country.  Most people live within 3-4 hrs of the national stadium.  Unlike Norway where Oslo is a long distance / flight from other cities.

5) Past glories.  Despite a long history of failure / disappointment there have been brief moments of glory for Scottish international team.  Beating France in 2008 / Gemmils goal <etc>.  When we did regularly qualify for World Cups (82,86,90,98 etc it was a huge event for the nation).  I think Norwegian success has always been more limited.  But Scots still believe they *should* be playing at this level and qualifying for tournaments.

Would love to see your article. 
Please post translation / summary!
It is often mentioned here that the Tartan Amry is getting older!
Not so many kids following the national team (because we have not qualified).

Skal!

Doug.

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In my opinion, although travelling numbers have undoubtedly gone up over the years, the actual support for the team has gone down. By that I mean the number  of people travelling to ‘watch’ Scotland these days, includes quite a significant percentage of the attention seeking, lets get dressed up comic relief style and adopt a wacky persona ( until we get home) fan. Basically, the interest in actually supporting the team in this shower is pretty insignificant. Sometimes zero. 

Back when I started going (early 80s) there was very few of the wacky funster types. ( AKA twats)  

In short, I believe our numbers have gone up but the actual support has gone down 😳

 

 

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1 hour ago, Jim Beem said:

In my opinion, although travelling numbers have undoubtedly gone up over the years, the actual support for the team has gone down. By that I mean the number  of people travelling to ‘watch’ Scotland these days, includes quite a significant percentage of the attention seeking, lets get dressed up comic relief style and adopt a wacky persona ( until we get home) fan. Basically, the interest in actually supporting the team in this shower is pretty insignificant. Sometimes zero. 

Back when I started going (early 80s) there was very few of the wacky funster types. ( AKA twats)  

In short, I believe our numbers have gone up but the actual support has gone down 😳

 

 

 

Agree totally.

Our away support infuriates me a lot of the time. I'd say it's been more the last 10 years, prior to that it was much better.

The "no Scotland, no party" crowd are usually full of song in the pub then turn mute in the ground.

Countless examples of this in recent years.

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Thank you everybody for the imput! Haggis_trap, I think you are making an excellent point wok regards to geography of the country and distance to the stadium. You could argue that our games in Oslo are pretty much only available from that part of the country, and my guess the totalt population of the region is ca 2 million.

 

Also very interesting graphs of attendence numbers. Clyde and aaid - can I ask what the source of the figures are? I would like to use this info in the article and need to fact check it.

 

It still seems to me that scottish supporters are more loyal to the national team, in spite of lack of success. The identity aspect with regards to GB/England is very interesting. It would also be interesting to see if support for national teams are growing along side more nationalistic political currents on our continent, or if its all based on results. For everybody except Scotlans that is... :)

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20 hours ago, Squirrelhumper said:

 

Agree totally.

Our away support infuriates me a lot of the time. I'd say it's been more the last 10 years, prior to that it was much better.

The "no Scotland, no party" crowd are usually full of song in the pub then turn mute in the ground.

Countless examples of this in recent years.

Absolutely agree.

This nonsense and furore from stupid ned cunts creaming themselves at those attention seeking Swedish cows is a prime example of this.

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29 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Absolutely agree.

This nonsense and furore from stupid ned cunts creaming themselves at those attention seeking Swedish cows is a prime example of this.

There's nothing like a bit of "live and let live".

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8 minutes ago, Flure said:

There's nothing like a bit of "live and let live".

It’s an embarrassment watching droves and droves of eejits who don’t give a flying fuck whether Scotland win or lose. 

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On 6/21/2018 at 5:39 PM, Sindre said:

The identity aspect with regards to GB/England is very interesting. It would also be interesting to see if support for national teams are growing along side more nationalistic political currents on our continent, or if its all based on results.

And 'nationalism' means different things in different places. Scottish nationalism, British nationalism, English nationalism, Irish nationalism mean different things (all discussed on this board in different places). Things are complex in 'these islands'. For a whole big single nation state confident within its own borders, 'nationalism' may mean something else. 

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On 6/21/2018 at 2:51 PM, Jim Beem said:

 Basically, the interest in actually supporting the team in this shower is pretty insignificant. Sometimes zero.

There's another debate to be had about what 'supporting the team' means.

Obviously cheering them on, and singing when your'e winning, and trying to help rouse them to action when the chips are down. 

But what about indicating displeasure as opposed to 'applauding failure'? Some would say you should never boo your players/team, where others would say you need to express displeasure when it's due - tough love, if you like.

Turning up at away games in 'fancy dress' is frowned on by some, but then again, if you're a player, running out the tunnel in Skopje or Astana or wherever, and you see a big crowd of tartan clad supporters, is that not feeling supported? Or would they rather have only discerning hardcore fans who reserve the right not to applaud mediocrity?

Edited by exile
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If you look back at that 98 campaign we played a game at Rugby Park, that wouldn’t happen now. Was there also not the case that the Latvia game was due to be played at Tynecastle but it was switched Parkhead due to the nature of the result?

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Oh that´s easy to explain. You want to step inside the scottish psyche? We are a nation addicted to failure and self flagellation. History repeats itself for scotland in sport because of this trait. Much like the gambling man- he´s not addicted to winning, he´s addicted to the losing. Why wouldn´t scottish attendances still be high? Its a national past time to revel in misery and bleat and moan about how crap the country are at team sports. Yes you remember that world cup group? All we had to do was beat morocco and you guys not to get a result against the mighty Brazil. Exactly. Scotland have never got out of a world cup group btw even in the 1970´s when we had a squad of world renowned players like the belgium of today. Exactly.

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48 minutes ago, Scotsdeutsch said:

Oh that´s easy to explain. You want to step inside the scottish psyche? We are a nation addicted to failure and self flagellation. History repeats itself for scotland in sport because of this trait. Much like the gambling man- he´s not addicted to winning, he´s addicted to the losing. Why wouldn´t scottish attendances still be high? Its a national past time to revel in misery and bleat and moan about how crap the country are at team sports. Yes you remember that world cup group? All we had to do was beat morocco and you guys not to get a result against the mighty Brazil. Exactly. Scotland have never got out of a world cup group btw even in the 1970´s when we had a squad of world renowned players like the belgium of today. Exactly.

Who's revelling in misery?

Maybe the question is, why are Scotland unsatisfied with the level we have reached in the past?

Or rather, why do we think we are special in that dissatisfaction? Presumably Belgium think they have underachieved, Italy, Netherlands, England, USA, Russia historically, almost every country who doesn't win it our do as well as they once did probably think they underachieve. Any countries that had relative golden periods - Turkey or Greece or Cameroon and so on - must be disappointed every year. I don't think Scotland are uniquely miserable.   

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2 hours ago, Scotsdeutsch said:

Oh that´s easy to explain. You want to step inside the scottish psyche? We are a nation addicted to failure and self flagellation. History repeats itself for scotland in sport because of this trait. Much like the gambling man- he´s not addicted to winning, he´s addicted to the losing. Why wouldn´t scottish attendances still be high? Its a national past time to revel in misery and bleat and moan about how crap the country are at team sports. Yes you remember that world cup group? All we had to do was beat morocco and you guys not to get a result against the mighty Brazil. Exactly. Scotland have never got out of a world cup group btw even in the 1970´s when we had a squad of world renowned players like the belgium of today. Exactly.

It might help explain why according to the poll more Aberdeen and Rangers fans go to the Scotland games than Celtic fans 

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On 6/21/2018 at 5:39 PM, Sindre said:

Also very interesting graphs of attendence numbers. Clyde and aaid - can I ask what the source of the figures are? I would like to use this info in the article and need to fact check it.

I used the Wikipedia pages for each qualifying group Norway was in, with the exception of the 2002 World Cup qualifiers (which were missing) which I got from here: http://www.allworldcup.narod.ru/2002/UEFA.HTM#M5

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On 6/20/2018 at 8:17 PM, fringo said:

I'm surprised - it may have been the 2016 qualifiers when I saw it ?

If you take it as a percentage of population Ireland an us are well out in front. Belgium and Portugal have about double our population and England, France and Germany at least ten times. For a supporter who lives outside the central belt the cost of travel and hotels is a bit steep and taking two days off work to go to a game can mean not bothering going to the less meaningful games. The type of football player over the last few campaign's has been pretty poor as well with managers seemingly sending out teams  to not lose rather than going out to win..

Ian

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On ‎6‎/‎22‎/‎2018 at 8:06 PM, exile said:

 if you're a player, running out the tunnel in Skopje or Astana or wherever, and you see a big crowd of tartan clad supporters, is that not feeling supported?

 

Not when they spend the game not actually supporting the team.

Says it all that the song our away fans sing most s about having a fucking party! That's what it is for a high % of the support and one of the reasons I cut back on away games.

I'd rather be there stone cold sober and see a successful team. I don't think that is shared by a lot of fans. It's an excuse to get away from the wife for many.

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On ‎6‎/‎24‎/‎2018 at 7:12 AM, hoofitharder said:

If you take it as a percentage of population Ireland an us are well out in front. Belgium and Portugal have about double our population and England, France and Germany at least ten times. For a supporter who lives outside the central belt the cost of travel and hotels is a bit steep and taking two days off work to go to a game can mean not bothering going to the less meaningful games. The type of football player over the last few campaign's has been pretty poor as well with managers seemingly sending out teams  to not lose rather than going out to win..

Ian

 

Scotland has 150,000+ fans who go to football domestically, week in, week out.

Ireland doesn't. It's all relative.

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24 minutes ago, Squirrelhumper said:

 

Scotland has 150,000+ fans who go to football domestically, week in, week out.

Ireland doesn't. It's all relative.

They might well do, but not in Ireland.  

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On 23 June 2018 at 9:03 AM, Scotsdeutsch said:

Oh that´s easy to explain. You want to step inside the scottish psyche? We are a nation addicted to failure and self flagellation. History repeats itself for scotland in sport because of this trait. Much like the gambling man- he´s not addicted to winning, he´s addicted to the losing. Why wouldn´t scottish attendances still be high? Its a national past time to revel in misery and bleat and moan about how crap the country are at team sports. Yes you remember that world cup group? All we had to do was beat morocco and you guys not to get a result against the mighty Brazil. Exactly. Scotland have never got out of a world cup group btw even in the 1970´s when we had a squad of world renowned players like the belgium of today. Exactly.

Total bollocks 

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