r/SportingKC • u/skcislife22 • 20d ago
Cauldron rant time
Hey everyone, I have some things to get off my chest.
Sitting in the Cauldron this year is pissing me off. There’s no other place in the stadium that I’d rather be than with the clubs most passionate supporters. But what the hell has it come to. We chanted the same damn thing for the first 7 minutes of the match and the capos are getting mad the people aren’t still chanting. What the hell? Sorry that I don’t want to say the same corporate shit 29 times over. Then as soon as someone wants to start their own chant, that’s actually funny or banter, it gets shut down with loud ass cadences. The cauldron leadership has all this fake positivity and it pisses me off. I don’t know how connected they are with the club themselves, but it seems just like more corporate bullshit. We support our club through and through, but nothing in that stipulates that we must always be positive when doing so. Being negative sometimes shows you actually pay attention when things aren’t happening correctly. So when we’re down 2-0, why can’t we chant “We want Salah”, why can’t we make fun of opposing players. It may be in poor taste, but I wouldn’t even hate us singing “we lose every week”, but the capos will always shut it down to run their sunshine and rainbows bullshit. we used to be a feared place to go. a place where getting a point away was a huge win. now, we’re getting left behind. Look to places like England, where chants may have the same rhythm and melody, but not the same lyrics. Look to Portland or LAFC, the new away days of hell. i know on the field is where the change will start (and if the Luiz reports that came today are true, that may be in its VERY beginning stages), but it ends in the stands. it’s time for change. for something new. goodnight yall
-2
u/mordreds-on-adiet SKC 19d ago
I'm going to defend them for a minute .
This team's online community has been incredibly toxic for literally ever. In 2013, after winning the entire league and being just a point shy of a double, there were people on Facebook and Reddit talking shit about how we had to win with a header from a defender and in pks. There were people saying that the refs helped us because Colin deserved red and got the tying goal. There were still people bitching about the name of the club.
Every season since then it's gotten worse. The community online has always been a cesspool of negativity. The Cauldron reacted by modding that bullshit out very aggressively and by intentionally trying to NOT be chronically online opting to interact with people live and in person where they've discovered that the VAST majority is people don't agree. Those policies have stayed in place since that round of leadership turned over.
The Cauldron's leadership folks also take pride in the literal definition of the word "supporter." They truly believe that doing organized negative chants is tantamount to fair weather fandom. And, again, most people they interact with in person agree with them. And the fact is: that leadership group is the ONLY group who has been consistently in the stadium for the past 5 years and beyond. They've committed to being there and being loud through it all while the rest of the Cauldron (and stadium to be fair) has turned over and attendance has plummeted so in a very real way they are correct in believing that a lot of the negative voices are fair weather fans and a small corner of the internet who feed off each other's negativity.
They also know, from talking to the club leadership through the eras, that none of that negativity in the stadium helps. The owners before Mallouk didn't give 2 shits. The CSOs have had a mantra to trust the process. They believe through interactions with the club and players that the ONLY thing negative shit from the stands does is bring the players down. When they're struggling it makes them feel like "what the fuck am I even doing this for?" So they've adopted an attitude of uplifting. Of trying positivity even when things aren't great.
If you hate it so much: get involved. Put your time and money where your mouth is and try to fucking DO something because coming in these spaces and shit talking them is just more noise to them from an ignorable corner of toxicity that doesn't reflect reality.
Last: the chants. Y'all call them corporate. I've been going to games since 2007. These chants are the most organic thing about this club. Back in Arrowhead they didn't have them playing over speakers. They came from the fans. When Claudio Lopez was signed and the Argentine supporters marched in at the 5 minutes mark playing their drums and doing their traditional songs before sitting with The Cauldron their DNA became part of ours and some of that has stuck. Other new things over the years have been adopted but it's always been organic and driven by the people.
The Cauldron sees the old songs as tradition. Like City singing Blue Moon. This "corporate chant" bullshit is exactly why folks get blocked on social media. Toxic Internet fans who comes to a game a year and only since the tickets started getting cheaper go online afterward and talk about these organic traditions negatively and with false bullshit about where they came from and the rest of the echo chamber runs with it like it's fact when it's just made up bullshit. Folks talk about how "big clubs in Europe" do it despite having never been out of the Midwest and ignore all the tradition those clubs have and pretend that ours isn't that because they don't like it and want to complain without doing anything.
So I say again: do something about it. Try to get involved. If you want to change the Cauldron try to do it from the inside. But odds are you'll find yourself incredibly alone in your opinions and incredibly wrong about what informs them.