When do you think England fans might stop singing ‘it’s coming home’? I mean, maybe if it actually came home? Sometimes it feels like the punishment for the men’s team not winning a major tournament since 1966 is that we have to hear that nonsense trolled out every two years, adding more and more numbers to the line about ‘years of hurt’ as though the accumulative time will make it more likely we’ll do it next time.
I watched some of last night’s World Cup game against DR Congo, then listened to the rest as I drove to pick up my friend Benjamin for a coffee. England scored twice on the motorway. Lucky, if you ask me.
Anyway, football’s been coming home since 1996 when it actually did come home, and England itself hosted the Euros in the country where the sport had been invented. Ever since, the chant has referred to elusive victory rather than a tournament, and I think will continue to do so for a very long time. To be honest, I think football has forgotten where it lives, and, based on this team’s performance, if football is making its way home this year, then it’s by miraculous chance and fantastic coincidence. Like the Mexicans, Brazilians, Argentinians and the French all going down with some inexplicable illness or forgetting how their legs work.
The Mexico game is in the early hours of Monday morning. The England manager, Thomas Tuchel, said today he thought kids should be allowed to stay up for it. Awful idea - especially at the beginning of a heatwave. Besides, it makes no difference at all to the team, does it? I do not believe England will win.
But what do I know? Hope is what keeps the England fans alive isn’t it? That’s what those wheezy trumpet notes are about. That’s what the Three Lions song means, and that’s why it seems so good when Harry Kane scores two goals in the second half to bandage over a dreadful team performance. Hope realised. Put that man in bubble wrap. Just make sure you unwrap him in time for Monday. And then you can tell me about it in the morning.
Alright. It’s two days later. Famously, England won 3-2 while I slept right through it. Also, it turns out that Wonderwall is somehow inexplicably the new football anthem and I missed the memo. Does it make sense? No. Does any of it? Not really. Can I explain anything at all about football? Clearly not.
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