SoundOff: What Do You Yell At the Goalkeeper?

By: Laurie | October 17th, 2009

goal kick A couple of weeks back I took the twelve-year-old neighbor girl (who is herself a goalkeeper) to a match played by my local team. My aim was, of course, to teach her that it’s perfectly acceptable for women to be hardcore footy fans.

In the process, I may have taught her a few chants.

(Although I’d like to add a little note to A’s mom: Technically I was not encouraging her to yell “Let him die! Let him die!” at opposing players who are faking injury to waste time. I was simply informing her of what other people might be yelling when this happens.)

One of the chants she was quite taken with, though, was the one everyone would yell at the opposing goalkeeper whenever he took a goal kick. Short version:

YOU SUCK!

Longer version (which I did not teach my young friend):

YOU SUCK @$$HØ£€

From what I can tell, this — abbreviated to “YSA” — is standard across MLS; it’s what every team yells at the opposing goalkeeper when he takes a long kick, especially a goal kick. In fact, I’m thinking it’s what let former Tottenham, Fulham and Mönchengladbach goalkeeper Kasey Keller know that he was, in fact, back in the good ol’ US of A.

YSA is the US standard, but there are others. When Joe Cannon was the LA Galaxy goalkeeper, Galaxy fans had their own pro-goalkeeper chant: BOOM! Goes the Cannon! I always thought this was creative.

A couple of weeks after that match, I heard fans of Ligue 1’s Valenciennes yell something that sounded quite similar at Marseille keeper Steve Mandanda. Except that their chant would have had to be in French. And I’ve heard similar chants (whose words I could never pick up) in matches in countries pretty much worldwide.

And so we at The Offside would like to know: Where are you from, what language do you speak, and, most importantly, what do you yell at the goalkeepers?

(Just for fun, below is a “YSA Compilation” from last year’s MLS Eastern Conference Championships. I know it’s horrible of me, but the pure, gleeful joy on the kids’ faces makes me laugh.)