July 19, 2024

Three Lions blues

I have a complicated relationship with "Football's coming home". It brings back memories

One bright side of the European Championships being over is that we'll get a rest from hearing Three Lions. I've taken refuge in pedantry, shouting at the air that "football's coming home" was a reference to England hosting the tournament and makes no sense when Germany are the hosts, or that Jules Rimet refers to the World Cup trophy and makes no sense for the Euros1.But really I'm just tired of hearing it, and it's making me cranky.

It wasn't always like this. I kept a diary in the summer of 1996, but even without it, I can remember the first time I heard the song. I was fed up after another mediocre Scunthorpe United season and Liverpool's failure to keep Manchester United from winning another treble, and suddenly I heard a song that I described in my diary as really beautiful.

The traditional songs that teams released before a Cup Final or a major tournament were along the lines of "We will win because we are the best, and you lesser teams had better look out". Here instead was a song that said "We probably won't win. We usually don't, but that hope is still there". It was poignantly true to my experience of being a football fan.

Aside from the song, I started that summer largely indifferent to England. In fact, I got quite irritated with anyone who implied England on television could possibly be a substitute for Scunthorpe in the flesh. But as the tournament gathered momentum, I began to embrace the national mood. There was something to be said, after all, for celebrating a success and knowing the whole country was celebrating it beside you.

It helped that life outside football was pretty good that summer. The weather was good enough that I could go swimming in the canal with my cousins, who for once weren't arguing with me. I was not quite 18, and my predicted A level grades meant that I could take my pick of universities when it came to application time. And after many years of painful unrequited crushes, I finally had a boyfriend who seemed to return my feelings. I felt on top of the world, and England were sure to complete the joy by bringing home the Euros.

The joy evaporated in the time it took Gareth Southgate to place his penalty too close to the keeper and Andreas Moeller to successfully score his. I switched off the television immediately and filled in my wallchart. The result: 1-1, with a smaller 6-5 to indicate penalties. I wrote Germany in as finalists, and only then did I allow myself to cry.

I wrote a diary entry in which I tried to wax philosophical about how by the autumn I would no doubt be indifferent to England once more and how I couldn't be indifferent just then because everything that had felt so right was now suddenly over. Then I tried to sleep, but I couldn't move past the intensity of the disappointment. I had to do something to soften it, and I settled for fantasising about Mark Alexander, the son I would one day bear, who would be the second person ever to play for England while playing for Scunthorpe United2 and would lead the Three Lions to World Cup glory. The fantasy worked, and I managed to get to sleep. But the atmosphere of lost dreams hung around me the next morning.

My boyfriend, never particularly interested in football, was much less intensely disappointed. But what was worse, he was exasperated that I hadn't rebounded as quickly as him. "I was upset about England too," he informed me, "but I got over it." We went to make out in an empty classroom, which we often did during our free periods, but my mind was still full of my fantasy future son, and that was where things really began to unravel. I'd envisaged a relationship for the long term, with marriage and children in a few years. He'd envisaged a few months of fun and sexual exploration before we went our separate ways. Another dream came crashing down, not 24 hours after the first.

The rest of that summer was bleak. My family couldn't understand why I didn't just throw myself into short term fun and worry about the future later, and I couldn't articulate why that would only hurt more. My boyfriend broke up with me, possibly because my emotions started to get on his nerves. The return of club football gave me a respite, and I met a man who was unsuitable in every possible way except that he was willing to indulge my fantasy of a long term future. Life went on.

When the real existential crisis3 hit a few years later, I reflected on lessons I should have learned from 1996. Golden summers are mostly an illusion, a coincidence of lucky events that can never be expected to last. I told myself that if I had fully internalised that lesson when Southgate missed his penalty, I could have saved myself a great deal of extra heartache. With the benefit of another twenty years, I'm not so sure, but it was enough for me to resolve to name my firstborn child after him in gratitude for at least offering the opportunity to learn. Unfortunately, Gareth isn't working socially acceptable name for a female-assigned baby, so I named her instead after the German goalkeeper who played the other essential role in that dramatic moment.

It would be an exaggeration to say that this all comes flooding back every time I hear "Football's coming home". Usually I can deflect with irritable pedantry or just roll my eyes that they're playing it yet again. But every so often, when a packed stadium is singing along, I'm there once more, in that golden summer that couldn't last, and the disappointment is as bitter as ever.