Football’s not coming home...yet!
It is a song that has come to define the sporting expectations of an entire nation. I am talking about “Three Lions,” the comically melancholic theme song that England fans of the last generation have been singing, as a sort of self-deprecating reminder of how low the English game has sunk, and how high the stock of other footballing nations has risen.
[Chorus]
(It’s coming home) Three lions on a shirt (It’s coming home, it’s coming) Jules Rimet still gleaming
(Football’s coming home
It’s coming home) Thirty years of hurt
(It’s coming home, it’s coming) Never stopped me dreaming
(Football’s coming home
It’s coming home) Three lions on a shirt (It’s coming home, it’s coming) Jules Rimet still gleaming
(Football’s coming home
It’s coming home) Thirty years of hurt
(It’s coming home, it’s coming) Never stopped me dreaming (Football’s coming home
It’s coming home) Three lions on a shirt (It’s coming home, it’s coming) Jules Rimet still gleaming
(Football’s coming home
It’s coming home) Thirty years of hurt
(It’s coming home, it’s coming) Never stopped me dreaming
(Football’s coming home)
Football (soccer, to those who are basketball-inclined), in its current form, is an English invention. Sheffield Football Club, founded in 1857, is officially recognized as the oldest existing club now playing association football in the world. In comparison, Real Madrid, arguably the world’s most successful football club, came into being only in 1902. So England, indeed, is football’s home.
The FIFA World Cup, the most important gathering of the world’s top footballing powers, has to be the event that trumps all sporting events. Winning the Jules Rimet trophy is an honor bestowed only on the best of the best. And being champions of the world is what every aspiring footballer – from Australia to Zimbabwe – dreams about every time they kick a ball.
The last time the gleaming gold, globe-shaped trophy went “home” was in the summer of 1966, when a group of courageous boys with “three lions on their shirts” overcame all the odds, and beat the West German football juggernaut, to the delirious cheers of an adoring nation. And not until thirty years later in 1996 did England come close to lifting it again, but fell unfortunately at the semi-final hurdle.
Many years of disappointment later, the newlook 2018 England squad – one of the youngest in this year’s World Cup, seemed to be on the verge of greatness. After cruising through the group stages, they had what seemed to be a very kind draw, and had a seemingly unprecedented easy route to the finals. Fans were expectant again.
Would it, this time, be finally coming home again? Well, football, unfortunately, is not coming home. Not this time yet, anyway. That’s because the young lions were beaten by a much more experienced Croatia that managed to outwit and outlast the English in the semi-final game.
So football’s not coming home, not this time yet, at least. But even after fifty-two years of hurt, it’s never stopped the England fans from dreaming. Because we all know that one day, someday, football’s coming home!
(Congratulations to the Cebu State College / Cebu Normal College Elementary Class of 1978, who held their 40th Anniversary Alumni Homecoming on Saturday at the Casino Español de Cebu!)
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