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England supporters love it, opponents get riled by it, and Sarina Wiegman doesn’t like the spin-off question it prompts.

Three Lions by David Baddiel and Frank Skinner (and the Lightning Seeds) has been sung by delighted fans of the England Women team at Euro 2022 on their way to a semi-final against Sweden this evening.

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Is that a good thing? Or does it come across as arrogant? Might it even be time for a new song that won’t be misunderstood?

Flo Lloyd-Hughes and Charlotte Harpur take sides to discuss the pros and the cons of “It’s coming home…’, and all it stands for (intentionally or not)…

Flo Lloyd-Hughes: Why the song is perfect for England fans

There’s a common misconception that when England fans sing ”It’s coming home…”, they actually mean it. 

The song has been sung for nearly three decades without, in my opinion, any sense of reality. It’s always been ironic. It’s a song typical of self-deprecating English humour.

How silly do you have to be to imagine that a nation of perennial footballing losers will actually win something? Opposition teams and fans have beaten England enough times and witnessed them crumble on the biggest stages to know that we don’t actually believe true tournament success is coming our way. 

England have not won a major senior competition, in the men’s or women’s game, since 1966. That is the cold, hard fact, the absolute reality. For years, this country’s national football teams have proven they cannot deliver trophies. England is a nation of losers at the sport it gave to the world. The fans know it, the media knows it, the opponents knows it. 

When hope and expectation are at their peak, England fall to a crushing, heartbreaking defeat. That is why the song is so perfect. It sums up the romantic but unfortunately unrealistic idea that England will, one day, win. That hope and that heartbreak are what it means to be an England fan and Three Lions captures that perfectly. 

In the 1998 update of the record, tweaked for that year’s World Cup in France after England lost in the semi-finals of Euro 96 — the tournament it was originally released for — on penalties to Germany, Baddiel and Skinner sing “we still believe”. The lyrics epitomise what it is to be a sad, yet somehow still hopeful England fan, because, after everything we’ve been through, the flicker of belief is still there. 

The version ringing out around the grounds of England Women games this tournament is also pretty magical because it’s being sung by fans from all generations and all experiences of football, including people not even born in 1996 or ’98. The support for both England teams, men and women, has finally merged. The excitement and despair is there in equal measure. 

There has been so much discussion about women’s football in England being marketed towards families, being sanitised and grounds being full of screaming children. This tournament has been the case study, the evidence, that Gen Z, millennials and Gen X all want to watch women’s football, and they want to get loud when they do. They want to feel part of something and they want to experience the joy and heartbreak of being an England fan and what it means to experience that, with both the men’s and women’s teams.

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It may not be actually coming home, but believing it might is joyful, and all of us need a bit of that in our lives. 

Charlotte Harpur: Why the question, ‘Is it coming home?’, taints the song with a different meaning

As England went 2-1 in front against Spain in extra time of their Euros quarter-final last Wednesday, chants of “It’s coming home…” rang out around a packed Amex Stadium in Brighton… goosebumps. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love an anthem. Karaoke on the cards? I’ll be there. Have I sung along to Three Lions? Absolutely.

But since the song’s creation for the men’s Euros 26 years ago — lyrics steeped in irony of the glimmer of hope that remains despite England’s repeated tournament failures; disappointments that the women’s team have suffered too — it has often been taken out of context and given arrogant connotations. I like the song, but I don’t like the question: Is it coming home? For me, that means: Are England going to win the tournament?

When Sarina Wiegman was asked after the 5-1 warm-up win over reigning European champions the Netherlands last month, “Is it coming home?”, England’s Dutch head coach replied: “I don’t really like that sentence, to be honest. 

“I like the song, but I don’t like the saying. What’s going home? We’re all going home tonight, I think. We just want to play a very good tournament. Hopefully we play six games and win all six of them.” 

In 1996, England was hosting a major men’s tournament for the first time since Bobby Moore and company lifted the Jules Rimet trophy at the World Cup 30 years earlier.

In that sense, football was coming home, because that particular European Championship was being played in England. According to FIFA, modern football was invented in England in 1863, so the sport was returning to its origins. The song was never intended to be an arrogant claim that England would win the trophy that summer. 

As The Athletic’s Jack Pitt-Brooke detailed last year, the Football Association asked Rick Blaskey, a former record label executive, to produce an anthem for the tournament. Global communications network Saatchi & Saatchi was helping with the promotion of Euro 96 and produced a document with three words: “Football Comes Home.” That would be the song’s theme.

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Ian Broudie of Liverpudlian band Lightning Seeds (whose The Life Of Riley was the soundtrack for Match of the Day’s Goal of the Month/Season compilations) wrote the tune and comedians Skinner and Baddiel, famous for their Fantasy Football League TV show, came up with the lyrics. 

There is a dual tension in the song’s meaning: hosting a men’s tournament in England for the first time since 1966 and the hope of Terry Venables’ team winning it. England got to the semi-finals then lost to the eventual champions on penalties, but the old Wembley was rocking that night with fans bellowing out Three Lions, a shared experience just two years on from the national team not being part of the World Cup in the United States having failed to qualify under Graham Taylor.

In that way, football had come home, and the same could be said for last year’s men’s Euros final, even though England didn’t win that either. Penalties again. Italy this time.

Likewise, even if England don’t beat Sweden at Bramall Lane in Sheffield tonight, hosting the Women’s Euros in this country again (after a smaller eight-team, 14-day version in 2005, with the final at Blackburn’s Ewood Park) has arguably created an even more unifying experience, extending far wider than the men’s game because of the different audiences that women’s football attracts. 

Interestingly, there has not been so much chatter from opposition teams about the phrase “It’s coming home…” in women’s football but it has been sung at every England game so far at this tournament. 

“Obviously, it gets the crowd going and people singing,” says Chelsea forward Fran Kirby from England’s base camp at The Lensbury Hotel in west London. “But to be honest, I try not to think too much into it or listen to it too much. 

“You’ve heard previously how it motivates oppositions to want to beat us and shut people up. We’re just playing the game and the football. I do know it does annoy some teams and other media people from other countries.”

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Overseas, the song has been taken literally to mean: England will win. After Italy beat England in that penalty shootout at Wembley a year ago to be crowned men’s European champions, defender Leonardo Bonucci shouted into a TV camera, “It’s coming (to) Rome!” 

Bonucci went on to say: “We heard it day in and day out since Wednesday night (after England beat Denmark in the semi-finals) that the trophy would be coming to London. Sorry for them but actually the cup will be taking a nice flight to Rome.”

Before that semi-final, Denmark goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel asked with a wry smile, “Has it ever been home? Have you ever won it?”

For this tournament a year on, football has already come home, in the sense that in England there has been an explosion of interest in the women’s game, a deserved appreciation of the supreme talent on offer.

But has the song become a stick to beat England with? A quarter of a century on from the original release, should a new song be written to reflect a new era? Maybe Ed Sheeran, who wore Lotte Wubben-Moy’s England shirt during his concert at Wembley earlier this month, would like to give it a go? 

Sing it as loud as you want when England take on Sweden tonight. No doubt I’ll be humming it too.

All I ask is for the question, “Is it coming home?” to be asked only if England reach Sunday’s final. 

(Top photo: Naomi Baker/Getty Images)

Check out the latest episode of The Athletic Women’s Football Podcast which is running daily during the Euros, free wherever you get your podcasts and ad-free on The Athletic.