Groucho Marxism

Just under two weeks ago the England men’s football team was eliminated by Argentina in the semi-final of the World Cup. England’s last and only trophy in a major international tournament victory came 60 years ago when the won the 1966 World Cup on home soil. The next time England had home advantage in a major tournament was 30 years later when they hosted the 1996 European Championship. This marked the inception of ‘Three Lions’, a song written by the English comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner and the rock band the Lightning Seeds. The lyrics to this song famously reference ’30 years of hurt’, as at that time it had been 30 years since England had won a major international trophy. The implication was that 30 years was far too long a wait for a major football nation like England.

Fast forward 30 years and England fans are still waiting for their team to win a second major trophy. (I am talking specifically about the men’s team here; the England women’s team has won the European Championship twice in that time, in 2022 and again in 2025). England’s elimination from the 2026 World Cup means their trophy drought will go on for over 60 years and has left some wondering whether England will ever win another major international competition. Their 1966 victory is increasingly starting to look like an aberration – or at least, a victory from a different era, like Uruguay winning the World Cup in 1930 and 1950. This sense was reinforced with the 2023 death of Bobby Charlton, England’s star player from the 1966 tournament, leaving Geoff Hurst as the only survivor from that team.

The song Three Lions is best known for the refrain ‘football’s coming home’. This was originally a reference to the fact that the 1996 tournament would be played in England, supposedly the home of football. Since then it has been sung by England fans at every major tournament whenever England start to do well and look like they might be in with a shout of overall victory. I have a couple of issues with this. The first is that the lyrics are inaccurate as football was not really invented in England. As I noted in a previous blog post, forms of football have been played throughout the world for thousands of years. It’s true that football was codified in England in the mid-1800s, but that’s only because Britain was the preeminent global power at that time.           

The other issue I have with people singing ‘football’s coming home’ is that it subconsciously reinforces an idea I think many England fans have that one day, England will inevitably win a major trophy. But of course there is no guarantee that this will happen. Moreover, I think this idea seeps into the psyche of the players and adds an extra layer of pressure on them. This additional pressure becomes apparent as soon England comes up against another major football nation. It has become a cliché to point out that England’s players inevitably wilt as soon as they come up against a major power such as Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, or Spain, in a knockout game. There have been a couple of exceptions to this rule but in general it has held pretty well now for 60 years.

Another way this additional pressure becomes apparent is through England’s propensity to throw away a lead in crucial games. Since 1966, England has been eliminated in knockout games of major tournaments on 16 occasions, despite taking the lead in 9 of these games. This happened in the World Cups of 1970, 1998, 2002, 2018, and 2026, and in the European Championships of 1996, 2004, 2016, and 2020. (England were also eliminated in knockout games in the World Cups of 1986, 1990, 2006, 2010, and 2022, and the European Championships of 1968 and 2012, but they didn’t take the lead in these games.) Of course this is a biased sample as we are looking specifically at games that England lost. Even so, the fact that England lost over half of these games from a winning position seems remarkable.

In the wake of England’s latest knockout exit to Argentina, in which they again threw away a lead, the England manager Thomas Tuchel has come in for a lot of criticism. And to be fair, I think this criticism is deserved. The substitutions he made during the game were bizarre to say the least and made it very difficult for England to take control the game and see out victory. Tuchel’s response been to argue that controlling games is not in England’s ‘DNA’. This has led to even more criticism and suggestions that Tuchel does not fully believe in the team he is managing. But the fact that the same patterns have been recurring now for 60 years, as noted above, suggests there is more than a kernel of truth to Tuchel’s claim.

What makes all this so frustrating is that England consistently produces talented players, yet they always seem to fall short when it matters. The fact that this keeps happening, even with completely different groups of players and coaching staff, points to something going on at a deeper level. However rather than blaming England’s ‘DNA’ (whatever that means), I think we need to look at England’s psychology. As noted above, I think the idea that England is somehow entitled to win a major tournament at some point puts extra pressure on the players which causes them to bottle it at the crucial moment. England will never win another tournament until it removes this psychological block. In this sense, ‘football’s coming home’ has become a self-defeating prophecy. So perhaps it is time we stopped singing it.