Film maker Werner Herzog could talk about anything in an interesting way. The film maker who is best known for his documentaries Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World (for which he was nominated for an Oscar), was speaking to David Goldblatt on the first episode of 'Game Of Our Lives'.
The German spoke about being fascinated watching Pélé a 16-year-old play against Bayern Munich for Santos, watching Ghanaian voodoo priests performing rituals behind the goals and also on his love for English and Scottish crowds, particularly Celtic and Rangers:
They have this very ancient chanting and there is something about English and Scottish crowds which is, and I say this with necessary caution barbaric. Meaning barbaric doesn't mean like barbarism of war, atrocities. I mean barbarism in terms of early battles of Scottish tribal people against God knows whom. A form of knowing where you come from, 'this is my tribe and it's Celtic Glasgow and the other one is Glasgow Rangers' and there are two tribal groups meeting each other in chant, chanting obscenities at each other.
Hernog went on to describe similar scenes of tribalism in Peru where fans would set mats on fire and throw condoms filled with urine:
There was a particular sport for the audience, those who had seats had straw mats to sit on it and when part of the audience was discontent they would fling these cushions onto the field like frisbees, you saw thousands of them filling the air, sometimes they would set them on fire.
And you would see for example all of a sudden part of the stands were looking at one man howling in delight because he would pee into a condom and then swing it over his head and toss it into the part of the stands of the opponent. And these sort of projectiles would go to and fro, so there was a particular Latino joy in this.
Only Werner Herzog would be able to get away with characterising arson and throwing johnnys full of piss as 'Latino joy'. Herzog was in typically insightful form on a great debut episode of the 'Game Of Our Lives', which you can listen to below, Herzog starts to speak about Celtic and Rangers around the 11 minute mark.
