The very day after Les Herbiers went swashbuckling into the Coupe de France final, the third-tier minnows have already found themselves an unofficial battle hymn.
The tiny Vendée club will face PSG in the final at the Stade de France next month, and thanks to noted local fan Philippe Katerine, they now have an anthem to roar/rap whilst doing so.
Katerine, a native of the Vendée region and singer/songwriter by trade, has produced a song in collaboration with MC Curculaire called ’85 Rouge et Noir’ which sees our Philippe decked out in full town crier/dandy highwayman garb for reasons we don’t fully understand.
For those not fluent in the Gallic tongue, these are the auto-translated lyrics:
The Vendeans are not so crazy,
Go away without believing in you.
Without believing, without believing,
Will not leave without believing.
Without believing, without believing,
Leaving without believing.
We were not waiting for them at this level,
Just like Scotsmen they never gave up.
Have you belonged to a team?
It’s fantastic.
From being part of a team,
It’s like the planets aligning.
If you disperse and go back online.
Have you ever been part of a team?
It’s beautiful,
To be part of a team.
The Vendeans are not so crazy,
Will not leave without a drink.
Without drinking, without drinking,
Will never leave without drinking.
I raise my glass to all the little guys of the Herbiers,
That neither gold nor silver have caressed.
The Vendeans are not so crazy,
Go away without a drink.
I raise my glass to all those people massacred,
Who have never forgotten the Vendée.
The red, the blood of our enemy,
The black, for our mourning.
As you can tell, it’s all a little heavier in terms of lyrical content that your average ‘tum-ti-tum let’s all play football’ FA Cup final song.
In fact, the heaviest an FA Cup song ever got was probably ‘Oh Millwall’ – Millwall’s official ditty from 2004 which took in such lyrical themes as the M4 motorway, Dennis Wise and rhymed the word ‘four’ with the number ‘4’ at least once.