The sights and sounds of matchday: FC St Pauli

Last November the brilliant Cities and Memory sound archive set out to capture the distinctive sounds that accompany a major football match. The audio exercise is described in 'The living nightmare of the Arsenal fan' where Stuart Fowkes tells how he captured and then remixed the sounds of the Champions League contest between Arsenal and Anderlecht at the Emirates Stadium. 

What Stuart's exercise didn’t set out to do was gather the wider sounds of matchday, including the chaotic mixture of conversation and chanting that can be heard before and after the game, and which contribute massively to the experience of watching live football. At the same time Cities and Memory is essentially concerned with sound and therefore didn’t gather images to accompany the changing pitch as the game unfolded.
 
What follows then is my own attempt to bring together the combined aural and visual colour of matchday. The fixture was FC St Pauli versus VFL Bochum in the second tier of Germany's Bundesliga. I've been making visits to St Pauli's Millerntor Stadion for the last decade, always spending the weekend in Hamburg in order to get the full experience around the game. This meant that I had a good idea of where and when I might find interesting and representative soundclips and photographs. That said, the pattern of matchday was dictated by the game itself, not by my data gathering. After all, if St Pauli were to lose this final home game of the season, they would be relegated to the third tier of German football. The high stakes nature of the match meant that I didn’t take as many photos during the game as I would have liked: it’s one thing to bring a camera to the game, but I wasn't willing to intrude on the occasionally fraught experience being enjoyed/suffered by the fans around me on the Sudtribune. My commitment to ethnography lasted only until St Pauli conceded in the opening minutes of the game, at which point there were more serious matters at hand.

There was also room for serendipity, for instance in the way that my pre-match wander to the St Pauli Fischmarkt coincided with an assembly of several hundred Bochum fans who lit flares, unfurled banners and chanted songs before making their way en masse to the game. At the same time there's always the possibility that a visit to the Millerntor Stadion will lead to new friendships, pub visits and parties that couldn't be scripted at the start of the day.

I’m not going to describe the assembled images and audio, other than to say they are gathered below within a series of montages that depict pre-match, the game itself, and then the post-match celebration (look out for scoreboard and listen to the sense of disbelief within the middle montage). The slide shows play automatically and you can click on the audio player to hear the accompanying cries, songs and laughter of matchday St Pauli.

Pre-match tension

90+3

Post-match party

Looking back at the gathered sights and sounds here, I think they go a good job of documenting what we experienced before, during and after the game. The images and audio clips go some way to capturing what is special about watching live football (in Hamburg, at least). The colour, humour and camaraderie are a reward for those who embrace matchday, rather than choosing to spectate from the comfort of the pub or armchair.

Something that isn't captured above however is the next-morning-remorse that comes from one Currywurst too many, or the echo of fansong that repeats in our heads for the whole of the flight back to Scotland and the days that follow. Forza-Sankt-Pauli! Forza-Sankt-Pauli!, Oh! Forza-Sankt-Pauli!

It’s still ringing.

With thanks to our friends at Fanladen St Pauli for help with tickets and the cool folk in Café Absurd for letting us capture the sounds of a lock-in. 

See also:
​Multimodal wandering/wondering in EC1
The Sights and Sounds of Portsmouth & Southsea