I've been a football fan all my life and although there's much I miss about the era of “jumpers for goalposts”, there’s one thing I don’t miss at all: football squads making records.
This regrettable tradition kicked off when the 1970 England World Cup Squad recorded a stirring and sentimental song called Back Home and a patriotic nation sent it to No.1. Even for the time, it was strangely old-fashioned and the players’ appearance on Top of the Pops was even more so. Standing awkwardly in formal evening wear, they looked less like a football squad and more like a male voice choir on Songs of Praise.
Back Home might have remained a one-off because England failed to qualify for the World Cup in either 1974 or 1978. The upside of this was that they also failed to qualify for the recording studio. No such luck with the Scots.
Scotland qualified in 1974 and tainted the Top Twenty with Easy, Easy. Though, since they were knocked out in the first round, Difficult, Difficult might have been a better title.
In 1978, they qualified again and tortured us with two Scottish World Cup songs . Despite selling very few copies south of Hadrian's Wall, both records made the Top Ten. One was Ally’s Tartan Army by a kilted clown named Andy Cameron. The other was Ole Ola by Rod Stewart, without doubt one of the worst records ever made. Not just by Rod Stewart but by anyone.
In 1982, England returned to the World Cup and returned to the charts, reaching No.2 with This Time, We'll Get It Right. However, when they failed to advance beyond the group stages, that song seemed bitterly inappropriate.
Twenty years after Back Home, however, things had moved on. Italia 90 was the World Cup that changed football forever. Pavarotti’s 1972 recording of Nessun Dorma was an inspired choice for the tournament’s BBC theme tune.
It immediately suggested that the World Cup could match any opera for joy, tears and drama. What’s more, the use of an operatic aria began to change middle-class minds about football. Perhaps it doesn’t have to be the sole preserve of ghastly ruffians and so the gentrification of the game began.
Nessun Dorma rose to No.2 during Italia 90 but the chart was topped by the official World Cup Song - World in Motion by ENGLANDneworder (yes, that’s how they spelt it). ENGLANDneworder were an odd hybrid of the four members of New Order and six members of the England World Cup squad but World in Motion was a belter. Rousing, anthemic and with a chorus written to ring round stadiums, it’s the best World Cup song. Of them all. Though, admittedly, that’s a bit like being the world’s tallest dwarf.
Its only rival is the imperishable Three Lions. Recorded for Euro 96, it captured the mood of a culturally and economically buoyant nation, hosting the tournament at the height of Cool Britannia. Though its re-emergence at subsequent tournaments, with slightly altered lyrics has been a source of irritation ever since.
When football songs were in their pomp, it wasn’t only the England and Scotland squads who recorded them. There were, among many others, Arsenal’s Good Old Arsenal, Chelsea’s Blue Is the Colour and Liverpool’s Anfield Rap. Though the biggest hit was Manchester United’s Come On You Reds . Despite it going to No.1 in 1994, I doubt you can remember a single word of it.
Come On You Reds was written and produced by Status Quo, even though Rick Parfitt supported Tottenham and Francis Rossi, Crystal Palace. If the Quo did it for the money, it must be the most perfect example of "quid pro quo"?
Just before the song’s release, United won the Premier League and FA double. The following season, they won absolutely nothing. Which is why I suspect there was a link between the quality of a football song and the quality of a team’s performance. It’s no coincidence that England’s best performances came in Italia 90 and Euro 96 when World In Motion and the original Three Lions were the nation’s commemorative anthems.
Since then, the significance of the UK charts and of an England song topping them have declined so steeply that for the 2026 tournament, the squad haven’t even bothered to record one.
So maybe now, the best England song is no song at all.
In which case – whisper it - we might just win the World Cup.
