Footballers have the power to rally a whole stadium with a flick of their arms, but the rules of the whoop-up must be obeyed
By Douglas Carter for When Saturday Comes
These days, there are very few football phenomena that remain undocumented. And yet, despite painstaking research, I can’t find anything about whooping up. Not a podcast, vodcast or TikTok video. I’ve had to invent the term “whooping up” because it hasn’t even got a name yet. But we’ve all seen footballers do it – turning their back to the pitch and waving both arms upwards as if to say: “Roar, damn you!” And we do roar, don’t we, those of us who like to verbalise at matches?
It says something important about our relationship with people who kick a ball about for our entertainment. Because there is no other arena where we so obediently do what rich people tell us. When our bosses invite us to live their company’s values, we don’t bustle off and live them. When Jacob Rees-Mogg whines about the difficult decisions he has to make that, inevitably, lead to a new lease of poverty for nurses and single parents, we don’t sympathise. But when a 20-something millionaire exhorts us – goads us – to show more appreciation for his efforts, we just do.