For the English, it’s mostly about making fun of themselves. But for nearly everyone else, it’s seen as a sign of being too confident and feeling entitled.
“Football’s Coming Home,” the anthem of England’s national soccer team, has been sung in the streets of cities across Germany this past month and will be shouted even louder in Berlin in the next day.
England is playing in the European Championship final against Spain on Sunday. It’s a chance for the country where soccer began to win a major men’s title for the first time since the 1966 World Cup, which was held in England.
Some in England are saying it’s time for football to return home. “I don’t believe in fairy tales,” said England coach Gareth Southgate on Saturday, “but I do believe in dreams.”
Southgate has played a key role in England’s history of painful defeats, close calls, and national heartache over the years.
As coach since 2016, Southgate led the team to its first major final since 1966, only to lose to Italy in a penalty shootout in the 2021 Euro final.
Twenty-five years earlier, as a defender with limited skills, Southgate missed a crucial penalty in England’s shootout loss to Germany in the Euro 1996 semifinals.
The anthem “Football’s Coming Home” comes from the song “Three Lions,” released before Euro 1996. One of its lines talked about “30 years of hurt.” Now it’s been 58 years of hurt, and the fans are still singing it.
“It’s been happening for many, many years,” said England fan Justin Tucknott, a 54-year-old business analyst who was having a beer at a bar near Olympiastadion on a sunny evening in Berlin.
“We’ll keep singing it until it does come home. And when it does, the words will change a little.”
Under Southgate, England’s chances of ending that nearly 60-year drought without a men’s title have improved. The team has reached consecutive Euro finals and made it to the World Cup semifinals in 2018.
He had to change the mindset and culture in a team that often includes some of the top players from the English Premier League, the most popular and widely watched league in the world.
Many of these players are famous and wealthy and may have believed they were entitled to win international titles as easily as they do in their club teams.
Southgate made it clear to them that this was not the case. “We’ve tried to be honest from the beginning about where we stand as a football nation,” Southgate explained.
“When I attended World Cups and European Championships as an observer, I saw highlights of matches on the big screens — and we weren’t in any of them.
“They only showed the finals and big games. We needed to change that. Our expectations were high, but our performance didn’t match up…
“We’ve been through a lot of big nights now, we’ve broken a lot of records, but we know that we have to win the trophy to earn the respect of the rest of the football world.”
