BERLIN — Question: where, apart from in the wildest dreams of a Baby Boomer/Gen X-er, can you hear the music of Bruce Springsteen, The Beatles, and ABBA — live — at a packed stadium filled with screaming fans amid an incredible atmosphere?
Answer: when England plays. And you even get a game of soccer thrown in.
If you’ve spent part of Euro 2024 watching England’s national team on television and wondered what all those incomprehensible tunes and chants were, here is a guide ahead of Sunday’s final against Spain (3 p.m. ET on FOX and the FOX Sports app), though it’s admittedly not an entirely comprehensive one.
Not trying to short-change you, but the nature of international soccer is that these things move quickly and given that most soccer songs are adapted to laud a particular player, they’re only useful for as long as that guy is still playing.
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Here is how it works. In England more than anywhere, fans love a sing-along, and they like to support their team. Or sometimes, mock the opposition.
There’s no “J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets” or “Let’s go La-kerrrrrs” or “Deeeee-FENSE” (with the aid of a stadium sound system) going on. Sorry to break it to American sports fans, but most European soccer supporters have an extremely dim view of the way NFL, NBA and even college sports followers get behind their teams.
In England’s quest for soccer lyricism, imagination is cherished, though cheesiness and cringe are not forbidden. The best ditties come from well-known chart-toppers with the words suitably changed to become footy-fied.
They spring from seemingly nowhere and before long everyone in the stands seems to have it down. There are message boards for such things but messing around on those doesn’t go down particularly with the hardcore. That’s considered to be trying too hard, too contrived.
Springsteen has come into it mostly over the course of this tournament. The Boss released “Dancing in the Dark” four decades ago and he’s still playing it live at eye-watering prices, but somewhere, by someone, a version popped up that paid tribute to Phil Foden; England attacker, Manchester City’s English Premier League player of the season, much-loved member of Gareth Southgate’s Three Lions.
Can’t start a fire
Can’t start a fire without a spark
Phil Foden’s on fire
He’ll be playing the Germans off the park.
The way it has become the go-to in stadiums across Germany, as England have gotten past Slovakia, Switzerland and the Netherlands in dramatic fashion, has a certain irony that says a lot about the British humor and might not immediately make perfect sense.
The fact that Foden hasn’t been playing anyone “off the park” (translated: dominating the opposition), having struggled so far, makes it even better to the England faithful, transforming it into a show of unwavering support for a popular player.
That England won’t even play the Germans, eliminated by Spain in the quarters, isn’t a reason to change the lyrics to “the Netherlands” or “the Spaniards,” either.
It stays as is. Why? Because.
When asked along with his teammates about what music they’d been listening to, Foden differed from the trendy offerings preferred by others and thanked the supporters.
“The new England song the fans are singing about me, I think I’ve got it stuck in my head,” Foden said. “Every time I turn up to the stadium and I hear it? Yeah, it’s a real moment.”
Some of the concoctions are obvious. “Hey Jude” for Jude Bellingham, combined with the “da-na-na-na” buildup, is perfect fodder for fans who are fired up and possibly fueled by an adult beverage or nine.
ABBA’s Voulez Vous, adapted for Bukayo Saka, is a nice little number that doesn’t quite have the vocal beauty of Swedish songstresses Agnetha and Anni-Frid, but hails one of England’s bright young stars, points out his specific skills, and incorporated the destination for the final long before England’s looked good enough to actually get here.
Buuu-kaaaaa-yoooo,
SAKA!
Running down the wing
SAKA!
Hear the England sing
SAKA
We’re all going to Berlin!
They are indeed. They’re here already in fact, tens of thousands of England fans, so many so that all the flights got booked out and even the families of team members have had trouble finding ways to get in.
And they’re singing, at Checkpoint Charlie and the Brandenburg Gate and the East Side Gallery, where what remains of the Berlin Wall is now a graffitied tourist stop, including the iconic image of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev making out.
While the roars and choruses at games are spine-tingling, England fandom has been inglorious in the past. The dark days of 1980s hooliganism are now thankful a distant memory, with measures put in place by British police to prevent past offenders from being allowed to travel to tournaments.
In fact, the most recent incident of trouble came on home soil, when thousands illegally entered Wembley Stadium without tickets for the Euro 2020 final.
The sounds of the England masses could be heard on Berlin’s streets from Friday onwards, and it didn’t take long for the favored tunes come out.
Not all are elaborate, and sometimes they are downright paradoxical. One long-standing chant is comprised nothing more than “Eng-er-land,” sung over and over, but is done so to the historic chorus of John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” from 1896.
Of course, there will always be “Three Lions” and its eternal line “Football’s Coming Home,” recorded in 1996 by comedians Frank Skinner and David Baddiel along with rock band The Lightning Seeds.
But, for many, that has become just too painful, still heard but regarded as a bit of a jinx by some who are loath to even say the words, at least until football does, you know, er, return to its supposed place of residence.
Given soccer’s natural and geographic rivalries, you’ll rarely attend an England game without hearing reference to Scotland, a tune known as “Scotland get battered, everywhere they go,” talking to the northern neighbor’s habit of suffering heavy defeats and their fans’ stereotypical enjoyment of nightlife to the point of intoxication and beyond.
Sometimes the words don’t change at all. Following Ollie Watkins‘ semifinal winner, the Dortmund stadium DJ put on an England favorite, Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.”
The response was predictably raucous, just because it’s an absolute banger of a song, and if you’re the sort of person that doesn’t like joining in with the “ba-ba-bas” then, yeah, I don’t know, we’re probably not going to be friends.
The relationship between head coach Gareth Southgate and the fans has been one of the plotlines of this tournament, having gravitated from him being pelted with beer cups after the group stage to far more positive feelings.
“My early memories of England are watching them in tournaments,” Southgate said after the semifinal. “Soo to be able to take the team to another final, and to know what it means to those fans that have traveled hours, spent fortunes and had journeys across Europe, it was lovely to share that moment with them.”
There is a Southgate song, too, a rework of British girl band Atomic Kitten’s “Whole Again.” It veers toward the cringe side of things – “Southgate you’re the one, you still turn me on” – and doubts over the coach’s tactics have prevented it from being heard as often as past tournaments, like the 2018 run to the World Cup semifinal.
Turned on? Maybe not, but with one game left and history on the line, England fans will definitely be turned up this weekend, with some familiar tunes ready for another airing.
Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports. Follow him on Twitter @MRogersFOX.
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