Why Can't Anyone Write A Good Football Anthem?

The lineage of great footballing songs has traditionally been weaker than the Tudor monarchy’s gene pool. Yet every two years, excluding the painful occasions where the English national side is too incompetent to qualify for a major tournament, a whole host of typically abysmal efforts pop put of the woodwork in an attempt to cash in on the cheap patriotic buck.

There are as ever two exceptions to this general rule. The best football-related track of all time of course belongs to New Order’s 1990 World Cup anthem ‘World In Motion’ with Baddiel, Skinner and The Lightning Seeds’ ‘Three Lions’ coming in a close second. Where both bear a winning commonality is in their unusual insistence of writing a great song before plastering it with a barrel load of rabble rousing rhetoric. Perhaps of greater importance in the case of David and Frank was the guild of realism with which laced their lyrics, essentially they recognised England will probably always disappoint but it never hurt anyone to wish things might be different this time. One of the many errors which have ensured efforts by Embrace, Ant & Dec and Tony Christie have been consigned to history’s cultural cess pit was their blithe insistence that England could actually do the near-impossible and win the damned thing.

Still with the bar set so low, there’s nothing stopping a whole new host of contenders competing for the dubious honour of soundtracking a nation’s bi-annual failure right? The official FIFA World Cup theme song is entitled 'Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)', it's a Shakira performed cover of an old hit by the Cameroonian band Zangawela and accordingly comes saddled with the task of encouraging world harmony where the UN, Nelson Mandela and Bono have all previously failed. Though the song fails in this respect, in Shakira's defence her offering isn’t terrible, it just doesn’t really fill my bones with fervour for the success of my countrymen or hold much drunken sing-a-long potential.

The best England has to offer in somewhat favourable contrast, despite the FA’s refusal to sanction an official song, is the Simon Cowell endorsed Tear’s For Fears sampling ‘Shout For England’ from the unlikely duo of Dizzee Rascal and James Cordon. Other than providing incontrovertible proof that Dizzee did actually sign a pact with the devil to get his four no.1 singles, the song itself is something of a guilty pleasure. By following the typical Cowell tradition of trading heavily on a track that was already pretty decent in the first place and with all proceeds going to Great Ormond Street Hospital there are many worse ways to spend your World Cup cash.

Sadly for such a good cause however, James and Dizzee aren’t likely to be the tournament’s biggest musical victors. Unfortunately when the inevitable happens and Rooney and co go out again on penalties, a tearjerker will required to console every skinhead sobbing into his pint. Such is the emotional potency of this moment that Oasis actually managed to extend their career for a further seven years off the back of it. With their legacy in freefall after the disappointing reaction to their fifth record ‘Heathen Chemistry’, Noel and Liam needed a miracle if they were to be guaranteed a lifetime pass onto the Q Magazine cover. That miracle ironically happened when in 2002 when a Ronaldinho fluke sent England to defeat against Brazil in the World Cup quarter finals. ITV producers scrambled for some somber lad rock and inadvertently breathed new life into to the then lagging single ‘Stop Crying Your Heart Out’.

A nation mourned in unison and the emergence of Beady Eye was tragically delayed for almost a decade...