As World Cup fever grips the nation, we look beyond terrace chants and team anthems to celebrate the finest football-inspired songwriting, from Cardiff rap to Zimbabwean rumbira and, inevitably, Rod Stewart.
Rod Stewart’s heartfelt tribute to his father, who cheered him from the touchline, is an inessential but sweet song. Though Stewart once admitted he tended to shout at his own son for not tracking back.
Pop and football share a cruel truth: today’s heroes are tomorrow’s ghosts. In 1993, Nigel Clough was the elegant linchpin of a struggling Nottingham Forest; Sultans of Ping FC, a semi-novelty Irish indie band, captured his grace: “Give him a ball and a yard of space / He’ll give you a move with godly grace.”
Norwich post-punks The Wombats hit the jackpot with a Madness-esque tale of boy meeting girl as fists fly on a crowded terrace: “She bought me a Bovril / She stole my heart.”
Los Campesinos! turned football into an emotional earthquake, asking what difference there is between England losing and a relationship falling apart. There’s always hope until the final whistle.
Women’s football has yet to generate its own music industry, but the Welsh FA’s collaboration with Cardiff rapper Juice Menace produced a spare, haunting call to women to join the game – more Wu-Tang Clan than World Cup Willie.
