fútbol without fans is shadow: the importance of the hinchada to the spectacle of fútbol
This is an article adapted from an academic conference talk which includes analysis of the 2019/20 season (the first COVID season).
“Have you ever entered an empty stadium? Try it. Stand in the middle of the field and listen.
There is nothing less empty than an empty stadium.
There is nothing less mute than the stands
bereft of spectators.”
--Eduardo Galeano, “The Stadium”
From Soccer in Sun and Shadow
In Ríoplatense[1] Spanish, there is a word that doesn’t quite translate literally for everything it implies: the hinchada. Loosely or maybe literally but not comprehensively, it translates to fan or fandom; supporters. But in Ríoplatense culture it means so much more: passion, family, home, chanting, heart, soul. Even as I’m typing this, none of these words correctly capture the correct meaning of hinchada. It is well documented that teams playing without their hinchadas suffer compared to when they do have them. That is why there is such a thing as “home-field advantage.” It has happened before due to sanctions, such as when Boca Jrs. received as punishment having to play behind closed doors in 2015 after some of their fans sprayed superclásico rivals River Plate fans with pepper spray.[2] Or Croatia having to play behind closed doors for the Qualifiers for the 2018 world cup due to racist incidents at their previous games.[3] In 2020, however, we faced an unprecedented spectacle: as fútbol leagues around the world returned to or were getting ready to start their seasons in mid-March, they were playing in empty stadiums because of Covid-19 restrictions, and it was initially unanimously eerie.
One of the ways humanities-minded folks relate to the world is through art, be it visual art, music, theater, photography, literature…art can be a way to express oneself, communicate complex ideas or even connect with passions. Eduardo Galeano, author, literary critic, and a self proclaimed mendigo de buen fútbol[4], wrote extensively about the sport, most famously in his book El fútbol a sol y sombra[5], which is widely regarded as one of the best fútbol books of all time. For Galeano, and for many ríoplatenses and fútbol fanatics, fútbol is a religion. In one of his vignettes, The Fan, Gleano uses the metaphor of religion to express what it really means to be an hincha.
“The city disappears, its routine forgotten. All that exists is the temple. In this sacred place, the only religion without atheists puts its divinities on display. Although the fan can contemplate the miracle more comfortably on TV, he prefers to make the pilgrimage to this spot where he can see his angels in the flesh doing battle with the demons of the day.”
The stadium is referred to as a temple and a sacred place. The hincha, the faithful devotee, can’t fathom choosing to watch a match on TV over making the pilgrimage.
Galeano continues this metaphor by describing what it’s like to be part of that hinchada.
“While the pagan mass lasts, the fan is many. Along with thousands of other devotees he shares the certainty that we are the best, that all referees are crooked, that all our adversaries cheat. Rarely does the fan say, ‘My club plays today.’ He says, ‘We play today.’ He knows it is ‘player number twelve’ who stirs up the winds of fervor that propel the ball when she falls asleep, just as the other eleven players know that playing without their fans is like dancing without music.”
Galeano knows that games without fans have an unbearable, eerie silence. He ends the vignette by painting a picture of the empty stadium, of what happens after the fans go home.
“The stadium is left alone and the fan, too, returns to his solitude. To the ‘I’ who had been ‘we.’ The fan goes off, the crowd breaks up and melts away, and Sunday becomes as melancholy as Ash Wednesday after the death of Carnaval.”
This melancholy feeling is all too familiar, and we make a connection here to the quote from the epigraph of this article. There is indeed nothing “less empty than an empty stadium.”
One of the first top flight European leagues to return after the Covid-19 break was the Bundesliga. After all the anticipation, the first weekend of Bundesliga games with no fans was definitely bizarre. As the weeks went on and we started to get used to this new normal, and other leagues also started to come back following similar protocols, we started to notice some immediate consequences. One weekend in Bundesliga saw no home victories in five games played. The “home-field advantage” was virtually nonexistent. This is striking, as it speaks to the importance of the hinchada to the team and the overall experience. Galeano would have a field day analyzing this new spectacle.
Just a few statistics for anyone who cares: In the beginning of the Bundesliga season, pre-COVID, out of 224 games played, 97 were won by the home team. In the first three weekends of Bundesliga post-COVID, out of 27 games, only 5 home teams won their games. This is massive and speaks to the importance of the fans to the game. For comparison, in the first three weekends back for Premier League, which started later, there were 14 home wins out of 30 games. In La Liga, out of 30 games, 12 home teams won their home games. This can be attributed to the fact that they had a few weeks for home fans to prepare themselves and for the players to kind of see what it would look like and anticipate what it might feel like. Overall in the three leagues in their first three games, approximately one third of the home games were won. This is not an insignificant drop from the norm. Announcers didn’t know how to talk about things such as the “difficulty of travelling to X stadium” because we are seeing a new dynamic in which that history and psychological effect is no longer as relevant.
The pumped-in fan noise was another point of controversy all over the internet, which is mainly where we are all existing and connecting as fans these days. As referenced in the epigraph at the beginning of this article, “there is nothing more mute than the stands bereft of spectators.” One way the leagues and networks tried to fix this was by pumping in fake fan noise. The response was as polarizing as we might have expected. Some love it, some hate it, and there is no in between. Less polarizing is the quirky ways different teams tried to get around the lack of physical presence, a favorite being Monchengladbach in the Bundesliga and their cutouts of their fans, which was later picked up by several other teams. Other ideas included tarps with printed or projected fans on them. The final verdict at the time of writing for the author is that they were all good attempts when faced with an unprecedented reality.
Galeano could not have imagined that in 2020 we would be faced with his worst nightmare becoming the new normal. All of this literary genius and observation begs the question, “How important is the hinchada, really?” The answer is very. Watching fútbol since the “restart” has been weird and sad. For those of us who live and breathe fútbol, who crave that feeling of attending our mass at our temple, it’s torture. For the players, it’s weird. Celebrating goals in front of no fans is confusing to them, heartbreaking to us. Statistically, we can see the important role the hinchada plays to the team’s success, and despite the best attempts on behalf of teams, it is just not the same. I don’t think I speak for myself when I say that I can’t wait to be back in the stands yelling, cheering, and helping my teams win, even if that reality seems so far removed at the present moment.
[1] Río de la Plata region in South America: Buenos Aires and parts of Uruguay
[4] “Beggar of good football” (My translation) Soccer in Sun and Shadow, Eduardo Galeano
[5] Soccer in Sun and Shadow, Eduardo Galeano
