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Relax
Vuvuzela madness and Ukraine’s horn horrors
The World Cup is being overshadowed by horn-blowing antics – could Euro 2012 also fall victim?
Paul Johnson, Business Ukraine
Volume 4, issue 6 June 2010 Since the start of the World Cup in South Africa global audiences have been treated to a barrage of noise which has proved equally irritating to viewers in every continent. This tuneless racket has been produced by thousands of ‘vuvuzela’ plastic horns which South African fans blow continuously throughout games, thereby robbing the World Cup of its more traditional crowd accompaniment.
Most international audiences have reacted negatively to this innovation, with the majority of fans complaining that the blanket noise generated by vuvuzela horns makes it difficult to concentrate on matches. Some TV broadcasters have gone so far as to develop new technical options which will allow viewers to block out the drone of the horns. However, despite demands to ban the offensive instruments from stadiums, FIFA officials have stated that the horns are here to stay and should be enjoyed as a cultural phenomenon. They seem to have adopted the politically correct position that as these vuvuzela horns appear to be such an intrinsic part of modern South African culture, they should be celebrated and embraced regardless of how annoying they are.
This vuvuzela debate has struck a cord with many Ukrainian football fans. For many years Ukraine’s football matches were also hampered by the inane blowing of cheap plastic horns, but a concerted effort by local fans to rid Ukrainian football of this unfortunate addiction has now resulted in the near complete eradication of horn-blowing from Ukrainian stadiums. Horn-blowing was an intrinsic part of Ukrainian football in the 1990s and the situation had reached such a nadir by 2006 that members of the Dynamo Kyiv fan club actually printed up a series of posters demanding that fans ceased offering their tuneless musical accompaniment. Graffiti also appeared around Kyiv’s Olympic Stadium ridiculing Ukraine’s horn-blowing culture and comparing it unfavourably to the flags, banners and songs associated with most Western European football followers.
Dynamo fan Sasha Braychenko was one of the people behind this drive to rid Ukrainian football of its horn horrors and he sees the current emergence of the vuvuzela as a dangerous sign of the dumbing down of a once quick-witted football culture. “We worked to get horn-blowing out of Ukrainian football because we wanted to offer Dynamo the kind of quality support which you see from sides like Barcelona, Liverpool and other top European clubs. They all sing songs and have clever chants but until recently we offered nothing more than empty noise. Basically the use of horns embarrassed us and made Ukraine look like some kind of cultural and footballing backwater,” he comments.
These efforts to force horns out of Ukraine’s football stadiums have been largely successful, but the irony is that horn-blowing may now be reintroduced into Ukrainian football via the very same European fans who the Dynamo Ultras first sought to emulate. Thousands of European fans visiting the World Cup this summer will return home armed with their own vuvuzela horns, and there is a very real danger that they will then bring them along to matches during Euro 2012. Despite the best efforts of Ukraine’s most progressive football fans, we may then have to resign ourselves to the long-term return of the horn to the country’s stadiums and the consequent deterioration of the match day atmosphere for both those who attend matches and those who prefer to watch on TV.
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