{"id":755171,"date":"2026-06-23T14:06:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T14:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/755171\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T14:06:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T14:06:11","slug":"the-arrogance-and-inaccuracy-of-footballs-coming-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/755171\/","title":{"rendered":"The arrogance and inaccuracy of \u2018football\u2019s coming home\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three decades after Frank Skinner, David Baddiel and the Lightning Seeds first sang that football was \u201ccoming home\u201d, the lyrics are being belted out again during the World Cup<\/a> in the US, Canada and Mexico.<\/p>\n

In the Radio Times<\/a>, Baddiel<\/a>, one of the song\u2019s co-writers, said that English people \u201cfeel, with this game, that essentially: it\u2019s our ball\u201d and that \u201cfootball is ours. We codified it. We gave it to the world.\u201d But critics say it is \u201cmistaken\u201d to claim that England is the home of football, said Sky News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Scottish professors<\/p>\n

The Dutch football legend Ruud Gullit has dismissed the \u201cThree Lions (Football’s Coming Home)\u201d song as \u201carrogant\u201d, saying England does not \u201cown football\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Week<\/p>\n

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nSUBSCRIBE & SAVE\n<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Sign up for The Week’s Free Newsletters<\/p>\n

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n

Latest Videos From<\/p>\n

That chimes with the fact that the \u201cEnglish football public has a certain reputation globally\u201d, said The Athletic<\/a>. \u201cThere is an assumption of arrogance, of high expectations, of going into every major tournament presuming their team will win it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also wrong to claim that England is the home of football, Hamish Husband, from the Scottish football magazine Tartan Army, told Sky News, because a group of footballers in the 19th century, known as the \u201cScotch professors\u201d, were pioneers of the modern passing game.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Their new tactics were adopted by Scotland before spreading across Europe and other continents. \u201cIt was the travellers that worked the factories of the UK that took football to the world \u2013 not England\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

A letter written by Reverend Samuel Rutherford in the 1600s, \u201cholds the key to Scotland\u2019s claim\u201d, wrote Tom Burrows on BBC Newsround<\/a>. He complained about people who gathered to play football on Sunday afternoons near Anwoth Kirk, his church. The site can \u201creasonably claim to be the earliest\u201d game of football, said William Wyeth, a curator of history at English Heritage.<\/p>\n

Join 350,000+ subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of
\nThe Week\u2019s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories – plus daily puzzles.<\/p>\n

To bolster Scotland\u2019s claim, archaeologists doing building works at Stirling Castle found a football behind a wood panel built in the 1540s. It was \u201cmade of pieces of leather sewn together, more like football that we know today\u201d. Also, the first modern football club that\u2019s \u201cwidely recognised as such\u201d was founded in Edinburgh<\/a> in 1824.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But the roots of the beautiful game may stretch back much further. More than 2,500 years ago, the Chinese played \u201ctsu chu\u201d, or \u201ckickball\u201d. The earliest reference to organised ball games in England comes in around 1174, said Simon Inglis on English Heritage<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But \u201cwe can\u2019t be sure\u201d whether these games in England involved \u201ckicking, as well as handling, the ball\u201d. A woodcut from 1612, which refers to \u201ccountry swaines at footeball\u201d, shows the players \u201cusing hands\u201d as in volleyball. So was it called \u201cfooteball\u201d because the \u201cplayers played on foot, rather than because they played it exclusively with their feet\u201d?<\/p>\n

However, football\u2019s \u201cglobal spread\u201d couldn\u2019t have happened without the \u201cevangelical efforts of British entrepreneurs, teachers, engineers, soldiers and sailors, who took the sport to Europe, South America and all corners of the Empire\u201d.<\/p>\n

On the charge of arrogance, yes, it\u2019s true that people hear the song as a statement that England \u201cview winning as the rightful outcome, and that anyone else winning is somehow wrong\u201d, said The Athletic. But England fans themselves \u201csimply do not see the song that way\u201d. \u201cThe whole point of it is looking back on past glories and melancholy,\u201d one fan told the outlet. \u201cIt\u2019s not a triumphant song at all.\u201d But \u201cif English is your second language, I get why people would misunderstand it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another long-standing England fan told the outlet she found the controversy entertaining. \u201cI find it quite funny that people get upset about it,\u201d she said. \u201cI actually enjoy using the phrase just to wind up international colleagues!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three decades after Frank Skinner, David Baddiel and the Lightning Seeds first sang that football was \u201ccoming home\u201d,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":755172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-755171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/755172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}