Passion Pours Out From The Heart
Every great football team has an anthem.
For Manchester City it’s Blue Moon. For Bayern Munich it’s Stern Des Südens (Star of the South). Stoke City have Delilah, and West Ham have I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles.
Liverpool of course have You’ll Never Walk Alone, the embodiment of the perfect football song, so thoroughly part of the club’s DNA that it’s lyrics appear on the crest. It was ingrained in the club long before the Hillsborough disaster in 1989 in which 96 Liverpool fans lost their lives, when the song took on a deeper meaning for fans grieving their loved ones.
The great football anthem is about the joining together of voices to create a whole, it’s a choir lending its voices for a common purpose, to display a sense of community and to push the team on to victory.
Indeed Steven Gerrard credited YNWA with Liverpool’s remarkable comeback in the Champions League Final in 2005. 3-0 down at halftime, the team emerged for the second half expecting a chorus of boos, but were greeted by the 30,000 Liverpool fans who had travelled to Istanbul with the “loudest and most emotional” rendition of You’ll Never Walk Alone the Liverpool skipper had ever heard. The team rallied and won on penalties, in one of the most remarkable soccer games of all time.
We’ve been here from the start
So what is Orlando City’s anthem? Some people would tell you it’s La Grande Victoria. You may have heard it coming from the South End on game days. The Wall sing it at the start of every game, with it’s Spanish intro and English verse and chorus, it perfectly matches the multicultural nature of our city.
The song sticks in your head, the chorus is catchy and it’s verse perfectly sums up the passion and pride of supporting your local team from it’s humble beginnings.
SoccerCast: Learn About How "La Grande Victoria" Was Created
But where did it come from? Much of the chants in the American soccer landscape are borrowed interchangeably from club to club. Indeed the ubiquitous Vamos chant appears at nearly all MLS stadiums, introduced to MLS by the first generation of American fans. They borrowed chants from wherever they could find them, their diverse backgrounds meaning they hungrily gobbled up the best influences from South America and Europe.
But The Wall is different. They wanted something to stand out from the crowd and make Orlando unique. Rodrigo Guillen, Iron Lion Firm President tells the story.
“We wanted something different. We didn’t want to be like every other club”
They scoured the internet, casting their net until they found La Grande Storia, a chant by a Moroccan team Raja Casablanca. Guillen sat down with fellow ILF member Jake Beard and the two of them went through adapting the song, and writing new lyrics.
Dale Mi Amor
“The song is about love” said Guillen “It’s really an epic love ballad”
Dale mi Amor (let’s go my love), Vamo Vamo por favor (let’s go let’s go please), de Corazón (my heart)
“It was important for us to make it clean, and make it for everyone, but also it was important to make it our own, to make it about how we feel about the club. The bit about staying true, that was important for us, because we all, players supporters and club need to remember who we are and where we came from.”
With the song written, the next challenge was getting it out there. Getting a crowd to learn the words to a song this complex is difficult enough, never mind when the intro is in Spanish. Guillen and Beard first introduced the song to their fellow supporters as they waited for the paint to dry on the inaugural game tifo. Beard brought his guitar, and members of the Iron Lion Firm and The Ruckus sat around in a Citrus Bowl parking lot, drinking beer and learning the words until they had it mastered.
A fellow member taped this informal gathering and uploaded it to SoundCloud. It was downloaded thousands of times, and the song caught on like wildfire. It was introduced for the first time at the open practice, and each time it’s been sung since, it’s grown larger and louder, cementing itself as a staple in the Wall’s repertoire.
Now it is sung at the beginning of every game, reverberating around the Citrus Bowl sounding more and more like the anthem The Wall has been looking for.
(Intro)
Dale mi amor
Vamo vamo por favor
Dale Campeón
Dale mi amor
Vamo vamo por favor
de corazón
(repeat once)
(Chorus)
Ohh eh oh e ohh Return victorious
Ohh eh oh e ahh And stay true
Orr landoo City A team so glorious
Ohh eh oh e ahh We follow you
(Bridge)
Passion pours out from the heart
so we have been here from the start (and)
rain or shine we do our part
cause thats how we made. our. name.
and now that the story grows
other teams are sure to know (that)
Orlando City will take the throne
and thats why we follow youuuuu
(chorus)
(intro)
(chorus)
