By the time this issue comes out, it’ll be day 4 of the Round of 32 for the 2026 World Cup.
Even though I’m abysmally late in submitting this, I have no idea who those thirty-two teams are. Very likely, you’re going to see Brazil, France, and Germany in there. Mexico, Argentina, and Spain are also obvious. It would be wild if America were actually in there. It’s possible with my man Poch in charge. He’s magic, you know.
But this piece is about none of those fine teams that will surely win (not America, obviously). This piece is about another team that is more than likely going to make the round of 32, and hell, possibly up to the semi-final, but almost certainly not going to take that cup home.
ENGLAND!
And more specifically, this piece is about the reason they’re not going to win the cup. It’s not because of the undeniable talent of the players, it’s because there hasn’t been a decent England national football team Song since…well, ever.
England has one star above those three lions, from 1966. Unless my research is flawed (it often is), there was no pop-inflected team song to take them to victory. I’ve read that Lonnie Donegan’s “World Cup Willie” was sorta retroactively made the official team song after their landmark victory. Either way, it seems that every World Cup since, there’s been an attempt to create a rallying pop song every four years, for all the die-hard, drunken Brits to chant along. None has worked. They got close in 1990, making it to the semi-finals. That year, the team song was written and performed by New Order, an all-time favorite of yours truly, and inarguably the only pop group up to the task at the time (I can’t imagine The Cure or Depeche Mode doing a football song).
Despite the valiant rapping effort on the part of John Barnes, the song did not help England bring it home.
Yes, I’m well aware that the song in question, “World in Motion,” cannot be objectively described as “good,” but goddamn what a collab. Sorry to be a hater, but none of the team songs since have been handled by anyone with the street cred, cultural weight, and downright awesomeness of New Order. Who the fuck is Embrace? Also, apparently, a reunited Take That (sans Robbie Williams) did one for the 2014 World Cup. England didn’t even make it to the knockout stage that year.
I propose the following English hitmakers get the asses off their golden thrones and try to put together a rallying song to surpass New Order’s “World in Motion!” The bar is exceedingly low, so this shouldn’t be hard. Below are my proposed artists and the likelihood that their song will give England that second star!
Coldplay (Feat. Marcus Rashford)
Against the will of God and Nature, Coldplay remains the biggest hitters from the Sceptered Isle. Even today, they probably consistently fill stadiums more than any other British artist. Again, against the will of God and Nature. It seems fair that they would be up to the task to do a “World in Motion II.” There is simply no way they could write anything worse than the original New Order song. Hell, they can get Marcus Rashford to do a rap! Apparently, he likes grime and is a fan of Dave (the rapper, not the person). He must be able to do a rap at least on par with John Barnes’s.
Likelihood Resulting in World Cup Championship: 0%
Arctic Monkeys
Honestly, this would be more of a retroactive thing. If Arctic Monkeys had written an adolescent, angst-fueled banger in 2006, when they were still young and hungry, maybe that woulda taken England past the quarter-finals. I’m sure they coulda whipped up something better than fucking Embrace. Sorry for picking on Embrace so much during this piece. I just learned about their existence while writing this, and now I’m mad about it. Regardless, I don’t know if these four Sheffield brats could recapture that lightning in a bottle now that they’re pushing 40, but they might as well try. Again, the bar is embarrassingly low. Listen to that Embrace song. “World at Your Feet.” I had to listen to it, so now you have to.
Likelihood Resulting in World Cup Championship: 5% (50% if they wrote one for the 2006 World Cup)
Charli XCX
Apparently, Charli is a Liverpool fan, so this isn’t exactly out of left field (pun intended). I could see her being persuaded to pen a stadium-filling banger for the sake of that second star. She doesn’t even have to be a big football fan. Apparently, New Order weren’t. They needed to get Keith Allen to write most of the lyrics for theirs. What Charli can do fucking well is get people riled the fuck up. I was at a wedding recently, and the DJ dropped Icona Pop’s “I Don’t Care,” and goddamn if I didn’t feel like throwing a couch out a window, and driving 90mph off a cliff. Her venture into “rock music” isn’t going so great, so a move like this couldn’t exactly hurt her career.
Likelihood Resulting in World Cup Championship: 69%
Oasis
Their recent reunion tour has proved that Oasis IS the voice of working-class Britain. I have seen so many Premier League matches end with a stadium full of proper lads belting “Don’t Look Back in Anger.” This song could write itself. The Brothers Gallagher are clearly not interested in making another album, but they seem to be quite interested in making money. They could even cover one of their own songs and change the words to be vaguely about football. I can’t be convinced that an England national team song written by Oasis wouldn’t catapult them to the finals, and finally bring the cup home with literally every pub in England singing along to whatever low-IQ, drunken nursery rhyme these Old Mancs shit out.
Likelihood Resulting in World Cup Championship: 100%
