What’s the best England football song?

It’s been 25 years since the highly emotive Italia’90 World Cup, and it’s still so very fresh in the memory I could probably do an entire blog on that one tournament in no time. Strangely I recall more about the games of that tournament than I can about last years’ event in Brazil, even though the quality of football in Brazil ‘14 was far superior to many World Cups of recent years.

Oddly history shows that ‘experts’ believe Italia ’90 was a boring tournament apparently!?

I suppose it just goes to show that if you are in the running for winning something in sport, your memories are perhaps clouded by sentiment!

Italia ’90 for me though wasn’t simply about what was played on grass – overall, it created the roots that brought about the biggest change in football in my lifetime.

Whilst it preceded the Premier League blueprint in England by a couple of years, I believe the ‘feeling’ that exuded out of this particular tournament started a huge ground swell of change and altered perception of how football was forever to be viewed in this country.

One of England’s many heroes of Italia ’90 was Gary Lineker, and he sums it up pretty nicely:

"There's no question Italia '90 was a watershed moment for football in this country. Football in the 1980s had half empty stadiums, then we had the Taylor report and all-seater stadiums. After Italia '90, football became the place to go: it wasn't just the working classes; it was other people as well. And women and children. I think Italia '90 was significant in that."

As an attending fan of Brighton & Hove Albion since 1987 (and a season ticket holder since 1992), what Lineker states is bang on the money. I was 14 years old whilst that tournament was on, and almost overnight football stopped being a predominantly boys only topic (in general) on the playground. Suddenly many more female classmates got in on the act too. And about time too, one might say.

It didn’t stop at school either. On the terraces of Brighton’s old Goldstone Ground (RIP), and over the next few years, the boom of women and children, nay FAMILIES, was evident, and thankfully this powerful new movement attracted people who had never had an interest in the game before. Football literally became fashionable overnight, and ripped itself away from the hooligan elements of society that were prevalent in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

I digress though.

So what actually springs to mind from Italia ‘90?

From an England point of view alone we had Bobby Robson’s finest hour, Lineker’s goals, Platt’s volley...

Gazza’s tears,Waddle and Pearce’s penalty agonies…

Not forgetting what the other nations provided us with > Cameroon’s Roger Milla (the oldest swinger in town), Scotland just missing out on the second round again, Argentina’s fortuitous route to a second consecutive final, spit-gate between West Germany and Holland. Not forgetting the Republic of Ireland punching well above their weight to reach the quarter finals, only to be knocked out by a solitary goal from the host nation’s golden boy Toto Schillaci.

As stated in the title though, for this blog I’m going to steer clear of the actual football and look at aspects relating to another poignant memory jerker of this tournament, when love had the World in Motion.

As football songs go, World in Motion was an immense improvement on what had been on offer before… so whilst not a definitive list, here is a bit of a look at some England tournament songs from down the years:

England World Cup Squad (1970): Back Home

Traditionalists will always say that originals are the best. 

As simple pop songs go, it’s quite catchy so I can see why it got to number one in the charts – which in 1970 was no mean feat in what was a strong era for singles sales.

In fact, when it got to number one, other artists in the 30 included stellar artists such as Elvis, Tom Jones, Stevie Wonder, The Jackson 5 and Simon & Garfunkel, so all things considered, Back Home did rather well! It does sound dated now though...

England World Cup Squad (1982): This Time (We'll Get It Right) / England We'll Fly The Flag

There's a quality to this one that conjures up images of an oil tanker. It sort of plods away and feels laboured – much like England’s on field campaign in España ’82.

What’s noteworthy? Well this double A side (look it up kids) was part of a collection of numerous songs on a whole football themed album, which contained other audible gems like future England managers Glenn Hoddle (singing We Are The Champions) and Kevin Keegan (singing Head Over Heels)… and who could forget the theme from Grandstand as performed by The Leyland Vehicles Brass Band?

And sorry Glenn; you were my favourite player of all time, but this isn’t a patch on Diamond Lights!

Quirky, but not memorable!

England World Cup Squad (1986): We’ve Got The Whole World At Our Feet

Being 10 years old at the time of Mexico ’86, I was just getting into buying my own music. But that still doesn’t excuse why I bought the accompanying album which included this song. Frankly all songs are hilarious, and include medleys incorporating stuff like ‘There’ll Always be an England’ and ‘The Happy Wanderer’ – bizarre and fun, but not particularly good.

SAW & England (1988): All The Way

The England team had the best qualifying record of all the teams in Euro ’88. The same probably can’t be said for the promo record though. It’s dripping with the 80’s Stock, Aitken and Waterman effect (which isn’t a bad sound in my opinion) but never really caught the attention of the buying public. Besides, we didn’t go anywhere near ‘All The Way’ either. What with the illness of Gary Lineker and the luck of the Irish never being truer than when they beat us 1-0, we crashed out of the tournament with nil pois / keine punkte.

England/New Order (1990): World In Motion

Now we’re cooking.

‘World in Motion’ was huge as football songs go, bigger and better than any England football songs that had gone before, and (maybe along with one or two others) better than what we’ve had since. It was a true representation of the sound of it’s time too.

I’m not sure exactly why it was so well received – maybe because of the association with New Order? Maybe because of the iconic John Barnes rap? Or maybe because the writers recognised in the lyrics that football really IS a love affair.

Thankfully it’s been wheeled out at every tournament since 1990 to remind us all how good it was. When that happens, without fail I get the goose bumps kicking in as I’m transported back to that fantastic footballing month and all that it evoked.

As an oddity, listen out for the keyboard lick just before John Barnes does his rap. I might be totally making this up in my ears, but I’m convinced it’s 90% identical to a piece of music in ‘Vogue’ by Madonna which was released just a few weeks earlier.

So who copied who?

Baddiel/Skinner/Lightning Seeds (96/98/10): Three Lions / 3 Lions 98 / Three Lions 2010

So good, they did it thrice.

Comparable in many ways to the quality and impact of World in Motion, it’s a tough call to say which is best.

On the back of the hugely successful Fantasy Football League TV programme, the hosts of said show David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, joined forces with the Lightning Seeds for Three Lions, and together they rode on the crest of the BritPop wave at the time to produce the most incredible anthem to Euro ’96.

The song captured the imagination of the public even more so due to the tournament being held in England and in no small way this was helped by the structure of the song. The ‘It’s Coming Home’ refrain was an instant success as a terrace hit (much like World In Motion’s ’En-ger-land), whereas not many had married this bridge between song and chant so well previously.

Rewritten lyrics sent the song to number one AGAIN two years later for the World Cup in France ’98, beating off other strong contenders in their wake.

And seemingly just for fun, Russell Brand and Robbie Williams chipped in for a rehash of the original version ahead of South Africa ’10. The latter version didn’t do so well, but has enough little interesting alterations that continue to do the song justice.

England United (1998): (How Does It Feel To Be) On Top Of The World

This was the ‘official’ song for France ’98, but it really didn’t do as well as hoped (much like England on the field). Personally I think that’s a shame as I quite liked it, and still do.

I almost feel that it didn’t get loved as much, just BECAUSE it wasn’t Three Lions, which had been SO huge two years previously, but as mentioned above, was taking on all comers for a second consecutive tournament – and winning! Maybe the public had had their fill of the featured Spice Girls by then? Not me though, as I felt Melanie Chisholm’s vocals added superbly to the song – so who knows!? For whatever reason, it just didn’t catch on with the masses.

Fat Les (1998): Vindaloo

Yet another France ’98 contender – it was truly a boom year for football songs!

Lead effectively by Keith Allen (who co-wrote World in Motion) and Alex James (Blur), Fat Les produced not only another song that could be belted out from the terraces, but also a fantastic video (with cameos galore) which gently mocked The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony – which itself has also been associated with football coverage over the years.

Guaranteed to get any decent crowd going, and for me only just falls into second place of all time great football songs behind World in Motion and Three Lions.

Fat Les (2000): Jerusalem

Yep Fat Les again.

On the back of the success of the rousing Vindaloo, the band was this time commissioned with delivering the official FA song for Euro 2000, and they went with the song that is often regarded as the unofficial national anthem of the UK: Jerusalem

It seems like it was an attempt to make an even more rousing effort than they’d created before (if that’s possible), but it somehow didn’t command the respect of its predecessors. Plus England were very poor at this tournament, which never helps the ‘build’ of a football song’s chart run. That said, we did achieve an all too rare victory over the Germans. I’m pretty sure there’s still a part of my body that’s wet from the beers that went flying in the pub when we won that game.

So there you go – just a few songs to jerk the memory. Apologies to Ant & Dec for ignoring their 2002 effort of We’re On The Ball, but this blog is already too long without opining on that one!

However, it would be remiss of me to leave this blog without mentioning my favourite two non-England related football tournament tunes.

So a special nod to the BBC for a couple of particularly good official tournament coverage themes:

The Heads (1986): Aztec Lightning

Luciano Pavarotti (1990): Nessun Dorma

Click and Listen!

Falling Into Football

It’s fair to say that my two main hobbies / interests are music and football. Plenty of my blogs have delved into my music tastes, so maybe it’s about time to talk football.

I didn’t really grow up having a direct football influence in my house. My parents have never been into football so by default it was never on TV, save a handful of times as I recall my Dad watching the occasional England Vs Scotland clash, probably due to a sense of patriotic duty.

Nor did I ever really play much football as a child, as I just wasn’t that good, and liable to break into a fit of nervous giggles whenever I actually got passed the ball… though I did get better as I got older and proudly even scored one solitary goal for the school team in a mini tournament when I was about 13. In fact it was a bit like Lineker's first in this clip!
No really!

The only occasions I got anywhere near close to football exposure was via my grandparents – both of whom loved the game. My paternal Grandad was a Tottenham fan (even though he came from south of the River), and his father before him had been a dyed in the wool Fulham fan. My maternal Grandad was a Brighton & Hove Albion season ticket holder, but nothing really drew my attention too much to the sport whilst I was young. Not even the 1983 FA Cup final when my local team Brighton, in unlikely circumstances, actually took Manchester United to a replay before succumbing to defeat. I do recall watching both games, but really I was just a seven year old boy supporting Brighton for geographical reasons rather than actually knowing much about it.

So the tide didn’t turn until I was ten and a half years old, and around about May 1986.

We had a school project running about a month before the Mexico ’86 World Cup and we were allocated teams to write about in ‘news bulletins’.
As I wasn’t particularly fussed about football I just went with the flow, and along with a couple of other girls in the class, I was asked to adopt Scotland. 

Were Scotland any good? I really didn’t know!

I do remember hearing that England had beaten West Germany in a pre-tournament friendly (whatever that meant) so maybe this was a good thing?

As the tournament started I remember learning that England had lost their first game, and then drew the next and was on the verge of going out of the tournament early. ‘So what!?’ I thought. I hadn't watched either England game, or any of the other matches so far – I was just so totally nonchalant about it all.

And then a strange thing happened which I still can’t fathom out to this day. On June 11^th I went to bed as normal – probably around 9pm, but got woken up by my Dad at about 1030pm. My Dad – generally a loather of football and all that was associated with it – woke me up and said:

“Come downstairs and watch the football, England are two nil up!”

I really only went down because it was an excuse to be up late, but as I got downstairs, some guy called Lineker banged in his third goal and England – or we the nation as I instantly now felt – were three nil up! 

Why my Dad brought me downstairs I just don’t know, and I’m sure he doesn't know either, but watching that goal and the second half of the game got me solidly involved with football hook, line and sinker, and I never looked back. It really was just like a switch that someone had turned on. 

England had two more games at that tournament before being knocked out in the cruellest of fashions. The Maradona ‘Hand of God’ goal was hard to take for a young child naïve to the ways of fair play (or lack of it) in football.

Diego Maradona made me cry about football for the first time (though not the last) and I couldn’t understand how such a thing could have been allowed to happen. I’m sure it wasn’t corruption on behalf of the officials, though it was highly incompetent officiating for them ALL to miss such a blatant aspect of cheating.
Maradona was the classic flawed genius whose misdemeanours caught up with him in time; other such talents followed suit in the years to come as England were denied a greater impact on the world stage without the fully realised potential of (for example) Paul Gascoigne, largely due to injuries.

One thing I learnt very early on though in my football education is that there’s one thing you can guarantee from the beautiful game: Football will continuously let you down.

Anyway, I digress.

The tricky thing about getting into football during a World Cup is that I had to learn quickly who these England players actually played for and I quickly wanted a club to support. Whilst I knew very soon that Brighton & Hove Albion was to be my team, it wasn’t out of favouritism for one of my Grandads’ over the other – in fact I still hold a soft spot for Tottenham in memory of my Spurs supporting Grandad – plus my son’s great great Grandfather had actually been a Spurs player.
Add into this I really admired Glenn Hoddle and Chris Waddle during the World Cup, and they were / are absolute Spurs legends.

Mullet-tastic

My Dad’s Mum was from Islington, which likely explains why his only soft spot for any club football team was Arsenal. Regardless, I was born in Brighton, so I proudly opted to support my local team.

The football season couldn’t start soon enough and my brain soon started soaking up stats like they were going out of fashion. In fact I would suspect this is where my OCD started. I was playing catch up with my friends who had been into football for years and I just had to get my knowledge factually correct or they’d cut me down in a second – because let’s face it, kids can be cruel that way!

During that first full season, I became deeply immersed with it all, culminating in attending my first proper football match ever with my Grandad on April 10^th 1987.

The Goldstone Ground

Brighton and Hove Albion Vs Crystal Palace was a local derby with deadly historic rivalry and I sat in the West Stand at the well loved, but run down Goldstone Ground on the Old Shoreham Road / Newtown Road to see us win 2-0. It was a terrific day and set the grounding for my desire to follow ‘The Albion’ forever, even though we were relegated that season!

That aside, it was largely good experiences in my football journey in those early years, but it wasn’t always wonderful.
Yes, I’d been upset about how Maradona cheated England out of the 1986 World Cup, but that feeling was nothing when compared to watching fellow football fans die on the television. Merely watching the Hillsborough tragedy unfold in 1989 was devastatingly awful, so it's impossible to comprehend how those directly involved must have felt - and still feel. I remember watching the presenter of Grandstand (Bob Wilson) trying desperately to keep it together. He was getting so choked up and I was on the verge of doing the same.

You can’t really go and research to see what it was like through recorded video footage (not that I’d recommend it anyway), because huge amounts of coverage were never broadcast on television or elsewhere again, such were the graphic images being shown. At the time, British football fans had a reputation (rightly or wrongly) of hooliganism, but this wasn’t the same scenario. The outpouring of emotion and grief at this tragedy was heart wrenching and it literally made people ill. I had absolutely no connection with Liverpool Football Club, but I had every connection with the fans as I was one of them. I could have been one of them; a football fan dying on a terrace. This is why the plight of the families directly involved was so enduring in the years that followed.

Tremendously, campaigns were fought and eventually won in helping justice prevail over the circumstances of that particular event, but in the initial aftermath, all fans could do was to pray for common sense and changes so that it might never happen again. It started the slow but sure alteration of how football was perceived and run in this country, which was has been good in many, many ways. It’s fair though to say that in 2015 football has nearly become as elitist sport in the eyes of many, but if part of those changes mean that lives are never lost again at a football match, then maybe that's the right way to go.

I try to detach from the financial side of what football has become, as at the end of the day, I just want to go and watch my local team with my family, whether they are successful or not - but possibly over time football has changed to the degree that the peoples' game has been taken away from many of the people for better or for worse.

I appreciate the highs in football so much because I know that the lows are more frequent, and being a Brighton fan maybe highlights this more than some other clubs! Football for me over the years has gone from being fun and frivolous, to being tense and escapist. That’s fine, because you keep going for the handful of moments that are frankly beyond emotive description.

Even now, aged 39, I still get asked “Why!? Why do you love football – what is it about it that is so good?”

Well I’ll leave the final comment on that, to the broadcaster (and Millwall fan) Danny Baker, who whilst commenting on Manchester City winning the league in literally the last couple of SECONDS of the 2011/12 season, captured the overriding and all too infrequent feeling of all football fans everywhere in one short sound bite :

“Football! F****** football! Imagine not being into it. Those poor, poor half-alive b*******!”