Reply With QuoteIt's just an aspirational ditty. A bit like 'The Blues are going up', 'We're the greatest team in football...', 'We're going to win the league' etc.Originally Posted by The Hooded Claw
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I just find it hilarious that “it’s coming home”, like they’ve already won it.
I live in England, my wife’s English and my boys were born here, but I just can’t bear the presumptive narrative of it all.
It’s not just the media - a load of England supporting Dads didn’t like saying that the penalty was dodge and that Harry Kane did not deserve a penalty when he went down. They answer by saying that Denmark shouldn’t have got a free kick. One of them even posted a meme of the UK with “it’s coming home” on the England bit and “Bitter and Sh1t” for the rest of us. Let’s see how well that ages.
To my mind, the difference was in the substitutions. The Danes made theirs too early and as a result were leggy by extra time.
I supported England in the distant past (Euro 96, in particular), but no way now.
It's just an aspirational ditty. A bit like 'The Blues are going up', 'We're the greatest team in football...', 'We're going to win the league' etc.
Agree with everything except your paragraph about supporting England. When West Germany equalised in the last few seconds of the 1966 final, I must have been the happiest 12 year old in the land. Sadly my joy didn't last.
No doubt influenced by my dad, I've always had disdain for English international football teams but even so I really liked the team of 1970, in my view the best England team I have seen.....until now.
My one wish is that Spain had a great finisher because England would have been chasing shadows on Sunday, just like Italy were for most of the semi final. Alas, I believe England now have a decent chance of becoming European champions for the first time. Fingers crossed it doesn't come home.
For a bit of fun I’ve began to look at it from a parks game perspective;
Final whistle, gutted, just couldn’t hold out.
5pm ish back in the club, “They were better than us, did well to hold them to 2-1”
6.30-7.30, “Might have been different at our place, we had a few chances”
9pm-10, “They had some diving sods mind, ref fell for it, our goal was a cracker and their first a f*cking own goal”
11.30- 12.30, “A f*cking own goal and a dodgy pelanty, that our ‘keeper saved, lucky bastards, we were much the better side”
Sunday dinner time session, “We wuz robbed, two balls on the pitch, dive for the pen, laser in our ‘keeper’s eyes, those tossers on the touch line even booed us when a few of the lads were having their last fag before kick off, I’m ‘phoning the league tomorrow”.
England winning does not equate to football coming home. They have very little pedigree in the tournament, they certainly haven't won it before. the default state in international tournaments certainly isn't England winning.
I always thought the original song was about the tournament (in 1996) being played IN England - i.e. the football coming home to it's roots. Still a slightly arrogant notion, as nobody outside of England really considers England to be the home of football.
I think the current use of the term is clearly related to England potentially winning it. Although you could say in 2021 the tournament for them has almost entirely been played in England too.
Rightly or wrongly, I took “Football’s coming home” to mean it’s back where it was “invented” (although that claim would be disputed I suspect) in 1996.
England could turn a nursery rhyme into a pompous celebration of how supposedly great they are. Besides, when they sing "home" do they mean the mainly Celtic areas of the British Isles from early half of the first millennia? Or maybe they think Italy will win and are harking back to the Roman Empire. I'll suppose we'll never know.
It's just a topical saying really. To paraphrase Kasper, "Has it been home before ? You've never actually won it". Even more pertinent coming from a Dane because Denmark have won it.
Whichever way you look at it, it is still an arrogant notion based on a sense of entitlement. Although to be fair I suspect there was a sense of self-deprecation when Three Lions was penned, based on a lifetime of near misses and abject failure by the England team.
I might have missed it, but was the song regarded as negatively and cynically in 1996? I genuinely don't remember it being so. I just remember thinking it was a pretty catchy and better than normal football song, but, now I look at the phrase "it's coming home" and agree that there is a degree of arrogance involved in it.
That seems odd to me - why didn't I feel like that twenty five years ago? I think you're right to a large extent in saying that the song was written with a degree of good humour and affection, but I'd also say that the sort of response I have to the term now is down, to a large extent, to how polarised the world has become - I don't like this trait in myself, but I'm less likely these days to see the humour in things and less inclined to give others the benefit of the doubt compared to a quarter of a century ago and I think I'm far from alone in being like that, the world is a less friendly place than it was.
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