Crunch! Like a heavy gold fist, it’s finally time for the Fifa World Cup to punch us all in the face again. Not without criticism, the tournament has ballooned from being a mere global behemoth to a time-devouring leviathan: 48 teams will play across three host nations and 16 stadiums; the stage for 104 matches across 39 days. It’s not a sprint. It’s not even a marathon. It’s a mission: Apollo 13 without enough oxygen or handy hints from Houston (though that is one of the host cities). Of course we’ll probably love it but there’ll be times when we’ll all need some moral support – and this is where World Cup songs come in. The sillier the better – but where are they now?
The football song is a slippery thing. There are the official anthems that tend toward the platitudinous, then there are football-loving pop groups arching an eyebrow to make a buck and, finally, there are the strange and often beguiling attempts of outsider fan-ish artists polishing up a chant. Guess which are the best.
Google “best World Cup songs 2026” and you might happen across Fifa Sound, the global governing body’s portal to an album of eye-wateringly saccharine globo-pop fit to give you Type-2 diabetes by the second listen. Despite nations competing in the World Cup, it seems that Fifa lately disdains national songs, so will instead commission a leftovers-jambalaya of salsa-meets-pop-meets-reggaeton-meets-rap-meets-balladry.
With leaden-footed banality, the tagline accompanying the collection reads, “combining the universal languages of football and music – a collection of different styles, paces and souls working in harmony”. It’s hardly a secret that Fifa has been extracting more than just the “mony” out of “harmony” for years. Let’s just hope that the copywriter was mauled by at least three lions for their efforts.
And, neatly, mention of those apex predators brings us to the second category of football songs – pop groups having a bit of a laugh. The English Football Association commissioned The Lightning Seeds’ melody ace Ian Broudie to write the nation’s tune for Euro 1996. Broudie invited comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner to write the lyrics to what became “Three Lions” – Broudie also asked theduo to sing the song alongside him. The song’s mixture of an incredibly catchy tune matched to salt-of-the-terrace mythologising and that addictive chorus made for a funny, silly, oddly moving and genuinely excellent piece of pop culture. Is it a song? Is it a hymn? It’s a soul-searching yet patriotic masterpiece of English existentialism. William Blake’s “Jerusalem” for tearful pub-land. We were all Jerusa-lads.
Honourable mentions in this category go to New Order’s “World in Motion” (1990) for it being genuinely good and the band – themselves known for tricky intra-group dynamics – welcoming England winger John Barnes to rap on the song. Barnes is quite adept, the song’s solid – it’s English yet successfully unironic. The 1994 German team that featured the decidedly non-camp Lothar Matthäus, Jürgen Klinsmann and Rudi Völler (well, Rudi was pretty camp) chose the Village People to write and lead their anthemic effort for the previous time that the World Cup was in the US. The non-jingoistic Germans manfully sang about “a land so wild and free” and having “rainbows in their eyes”. The video is a gem of awkward bonhomie.
While Shakira performed “Waka-Waka” (if I was Fozzie Bear from the Muppets, I’d sue) for the 2010 South Africa World Cup, it was Somali-Canadian singer K’naan who wrote the best song. His “Wavin’ Flag” originally begged for peace amid the Somalian civil war and was then re-tooled by Coca-Cola – but the emotional edges weren’t worn off. It was successfully patriotic, if in a sadder key.
This year, in support of Scotland, bookishly brilliant Glaswegian band Belle & Sebastian released “It Only Takes One Lion”, a well-turned and reflective tribute to inner courage and Scottish strength. But I’m afraid that I will have to take you back to England for the definitive mix of idiot-savant greatness, non-sequitur poetry and lunatic patriotism: “Vindaloo” by Fat Les. Britpop legend Alex James, art superstar Damien Hirst and eccentric actor Keith Allen combined forces for the song. I wonder what they were on? But I’ve rarely been happier than blasting this super-tosh at full volume from a windows-down Jag as my pal and I drove through Carcassonne before watching England narrowly beat Wales in the 93rd minute of Euro 2016. We’d get knocked out by Iceland soon after. The excellent stupidity, the ironic patriotism – or is it? – is what might just be missing from the next five and a half weeks of our lives.
Robert Bound is a contributing editor at Monocle. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
