For decades, soccer officials in the United States simply wanted some fans in their stadiums. Now they have them, and some of those fans have brought an unexpected problem: a vulgar chant, in the vein of more notoriously rabid soccer fans in other countries.
Hardly clever, it is only three words — an insult directed at the opposing goalkeeper — but enough to give M.L.S. officials fits as they hear it spill over into live television broadcasts. The chant's simplicity is what makes it appealing or appalling, depending on your perspective.
It has been heard this season at Major League Soccer games in Seattle; Sandy, Utah; Harrison, N.J.; Kansas City, Kan.; and Columbus, Ohio, among other places. It has been shouted by thousands of fans at men's national team games, too.
"Sport is spontaneous, it's passionate, and I don't think any of us would want to remove that from the game," said Evan Dabby, senior director of supporter relations at M.L.S. "That's what makes it beautiful. That's what makes it enticing."
But there are boundaries around that beauty, the league has decided. Dabby this season has overseen a new, focused initiative to get clubs to eradicate the chant, which, according to him, "is neither passionate nor spontaneous."
The sentiment behind the effort is not new. Commissioner Don Garber spoke out publicly against the chant last year. Before that, teams like the Portland Timbers and the New England Revolution, among others, engaged in something like fan diplomacy, behavioral psychology or motivational tactics — or perhaps all three. Their efforts have revealed how a fledgling sports league tries to nurture and shape an emergent fan base.
It appears to be succeeding, partially. The league said the chant was no longer done in organized fashion at any M.L.S. stadiums, though it remains a delicate situation.
"What anyone can witness is progress," Dabby said.
It is deployed in one specific game situation: when the opposing team's goalkeeper prepares to restart the game on a goal kick, there is a crescendo of percussive noise and swelling voices. When the player then puts his foot through the ball, the fans yell out the phrase in unison.
The three-word chant, known as the Y.S.A. chant, is a more vulgar expression of "You suck, jerk." It has deep but unclear roots, dating back at least a decade. Its form and usage are similar to ones used in South America, Central America and Europe, suggesting that early M.L.S. fans — who borrow heavily at first from international fan cultures — adopted the structure and added their own choice words.
"It was a way to be antagonistic, in a tongue-in-cheek way," said Dave Hoyt, a former president of Portland's fan group, Timbers Army. "It gets people's attention."
Timbers fans used the chant from about 2007 to 2009 (when the club played in a minor league), Hoyt said, before deciding as a group that it was overused. Hoyt said it was not about censorship. "We still have plenty of chants that have blue language, or whatever you want to call it," he said.
Its obscenity is the chief concern for its harshest critics. Others, like Hoyt, simply find it played out. And some, particularly those exposed to overseas soccer stadiums, may wonder what the fuss is about.
Anti-Semitic chants last season at a Premier League stadium in England caused a scandal. Racist chants directed at black players continue to be a scourge for many European leagues. Set against these examples, the American chanting may seem harmless.
But Jerome de Bontin, a former president of the French club Monaco, who was hired last year as the general manager of the Red Bulls, said residual European hooligan culture was nothing to aspire to. He said he appreciated that American fans seemed interested in games rather than creating a ruckus and was disappointed when he heard the chant for the first time.
"I thought it was absurd, that it really didn't belong and that, if we didn't take some action, it would probably get worse because, as more fans come to the games, they would develop this false idea that it's accepted, that it's encouraged," de Bontin said.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 20, 2013
A previous version of this article misidentified one of the cities where Major League Soccer fans have used a vulgar chant this season. It is Kansas City, Kan., not Kansas City, Mo.
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