Southgate not ready to strike up the band
English manager has heard the music before, and he’d rather focus on a win over Sweden
MOSCOW — The resident DJ at Nizhny Novgorod’s cavernous new stadium had gotten his records mixed up.
For each competing nation at this World Cup, there is a hype song that is played about a half-hour before kickoff as teams are finishing their warm-up routines. Some are national classics, most are more associated with the sport and the given national team than any great achievements in the field of music. Few, if any, have played on the mind of a Grammys judge.
England’s ditty is inevitably the iconic “Football’s Coming Home,” a melodic offering that became an instant anthem when the country hosted Euro 1996. Football didn’t come home then as Germany brought the trophy back to its homeland instead. But that didn’t stop the song’s writers, comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner and indie act The Lightning Seeds, from giving it a fresh shake for the World Cup in France two summers later.
The intro to the ’98 version crackles to a packed Wembley Stadium belting out the chorus in 1996 and then overlays the commentary from England’s moment of agony as they exited their own tournament.
“Gareth Southgate, the whole of England is with you,” it crackles before a delay leads to the echoing outcome. “Oh it’s saved … aaved … aaaved.”
As Southgate’s English side finished its tune-ups for the second match of its 2018 World Cup in Nizhny Novgorod almost two weeks ago, that 1998 version, rather than the classic of ’96, echoed around the bowl. The now national team manager can’t have failed to have heard his darkest moment — he missed the decisive penalty against the Ger- mans in the semifinal — replayed at deafening octaves.
By the time England re-emerged for the game and promptly ran up a baseball score against a Panama side that looked like it would have been better off with bats, the words had likely long rung out of Southgate’s ears.
On Tuesday night here in Moscow, as Southgate’s new, young England exorcised the demons of 1996 and decades’ worth of penalty pain and eliminated Colombia in an utterly enthralling battle, the chorus again pierced the sky above the Spartak Stadium.
Only one problem. England is now beginning to really believe what it sings. The song is more popular than ever, swamping social media in various meme formats.
Football admittedly has its best chance of coming home for perhaps the past 52 years since the country won the tournament for its first and only time. But the hype that is threatening to whip into full-blown hysteria ahead of Saturday afternoon’s quarterfinal with Sweden in Samara ignores a pressing issue: even four games in and with potentially three to go, we still don’t know just how good Southgate’s new generation is.
We know the English have the backbone that has so been so badly lacking at key moments in the painful past. In bouncing back from the concession of a late equalizer to Colombia and also refusing to crumble when Jordan Henderson missed his country’s third penalty in the shootout, they showed a psychological edge that previous generations lacked.
This World Cup remains impossible to pin down. And on England’s breezier side of the draw, mental and physical prowess will go a long way. But in terms of where the hardware goes, tactical nous and true talent will have their say.
On those fronts we know the English have the best set-piece routines in the tournament. In Harry Kane, they have its most prolific marksman, in Kieran Trippier they have the most inform attacking defender in Russia and in John Stones, a rearguard rock. Southgate tactically got the better of Colombia’s veteran coach Jose Pekerman. All of this is to say that England has answered plenty of questions. Plenty, though, remain.
The wonder of a World Cup is that even in victory the next test is always just around the corner. And as England turns toward Samara’s stricken spaceship of a stadium on Saturday, it will find the most intriguing team left at the tournament.
At almost every step on the road to Samara, Sweden has accounted for bona fide World Cup royalty. The same cannot be even thought, never mind said, of England. Sweden upset the odds to split France and the Netherlands in qualifying, eliminating the Dutch (who had finished third at Brazil 2014 and runners-up in South Africa four years earlier) before the World Cup even got its shoes on. Next up, the Swedes eliminated Italy in a playoff, ensuring a global gathering would not feature the Azzurri for the first time in 60 years.
In Group F it began with a gritty victory over South Korea and ended with a trouncing of Mexico, either side of a sickening defeat to Germany. No matter, Sweden’s six points were enough to help send the defending champion home in the group stage’s biggest sensation. For good measure, the Swedes eliminated a Switzerland side that sits seven places above England in the FIFA rankings.
And still Janne Andersson’s side is overlooked — not so much on the back pages of England’s tabloids but on the front where it has apparently been taken as given that Southgate’s Lions are bound for the final at the very least. Southgate strives to sound out such talk. “We have underestimated them for years. Sweden is another team we have a poor record against,” he said Thursday. “They have created their own story and made history. I don’t want to go home yet.”
Southgate may not yet want to go there but more than ever before England believes football is coming home. Saturday in Samara will provide more answers as to which will happen first.