One question for each 2026 World Cup team. Will football come home, or will England realize that the song is about something else?
Would you love me in a Bentley? Would you love me on a $95 bus from downtown Boston to Gillette Stadium? Footnote is asking 48 questions, and they’re all about the 48 teams at the 2026 World Cup. This post is part of our Group L preview. You can also read previews of Panama, Ghana, and Croatia.
Will football come home, or will England realize that the song is about something else?
The thing about England, the thing that is most important to understand about it as a soccer-playing nation, is that it is an island full of people who have slowly been driven insane by the fact that they invented the greatest organized sport in the world but then forgot to get good at it.
Or, to be a little more fair and a little more precise, England were very good at soccer for a long time, just not when they played it against everyone else.
In all likelihood, England probably were the best national team in the world from about the time that the sport became wildly popular across the globe at the end of the 19th century through World War II. Unfortunately, throughout that period of time the English Football Association decided that participating in any tournament that they did not organize was beneath them, so England did not play in any of the first three World Cups.
By the time they finally joined the party, the rest of the world had caught up. So instead of being the dominant force at the birth of international football, England’s big tournament history consists of one World Cup and lots and lots of heartbreak.
The second half of the century was so defined by international football disappointment in England that ahead of hosting the Euros in 1996 the comedians Frank Skinner and David Baddiel wrote a song about finally embracing optimism after years of hard-learned skepticism.
The song is called “Three Lions” but you know it as the “football’s coming home song” or the “it’s coming home song,” the song that birthed a thousand memes and whose refrain has become shorthand for England finally winning something again.
Of course the song is actually about how soccer is a game, and you’re supposed to enjoy it, and an international tournament is a special moment where fans should come together with positive belief rather than dread.
Nonetheless, the song is mostly interpreted as being about winning, possibly because of the broader English obsession with finally winning something again.
And that’s probably why no one seems to have enjoyed the past eight years, which have been probably the most successful extended period of time in the history of the Three Lions.
Since 2018, England have reached the World Cup semifinals, two European Championships finals, and a World Cup quarterfinal. Technically that stretch doesn’t contain a trophy, but it’s the only time in the history of international football in which England have actually been good in every consecutive major tournament for eight years. The great England side of 1966 won the World Cup, and then dissipated within six years to a disastrous 1970s in which they failed to qualify for two European Championships and two World Cups.
We are arguably currently living through the golden period of English football. But for all of the relative success of the past decade, the fans will only really feel like football has come home if they win something.
The good news is that they have perhaps the most in form goalscorer in the world. Harry Kane enters the World Cup off of a truly outstanding season for Bayern Munich: 61 goals in just 51 games across all competitions, plus lots of gamebreaking passes to Luis Diaz and Michael Olise on the wings.
More importantly for England, Kane seems to be relatively healthy. Harry Kane amazingly dedicated to the craft of being a footballer, sometimes to the extent that it seems like he was crafted in some sort of Dungeons & Dragons character creator in which the user put all of their point towards “soccer” and zero points into “caring about literally anything else or having an off-the-pitch personality.” Here is a truly remarkable piece of social media content in which he can’ think of anything to say about any American food aside from “it’s not for me” or “I haven’t had that, to be fair.”
It is, of course, good for professional soccer players to be dedicated to being professional soccer players. However, Kane has a reputation for occasionally forcing himself to play through pain to the detriment of his teams. He notoriously rushed back from an injury to play in the 2019 Champions League final and was basically a non-entity as the game slipped away from Tottenham. But Kane also tried to play himself into form through some nagging injuries at the Euros two years ago, which was part of the reason that England never managed to establish any attacking rhythm all tournament.
With Kane healthy, the two key questions for England will be their ability to control games and the health and form of the players running beyond him. Gareth Southgate, for all his flaws, perfected a style of borderline lifeless tournament football in which games never got away from England, and in which they pretty much always possessed the ball in such a way that they were already in position to play defense when they lost. Thomas Tuchel is playing what on paper looks like a slightly more attacking set up — a traditional-ish 4-2-3-1 with a number 10 and fullbacks who get forward — but in his club coaching career he has always been happy for his teams to prioritize control over creation.
Meanwhile Harry Kane is an elite goalscorer frequently makes his biggest impact as a passer. Part of the magic of his play in front of goal is that he leverages the fear that he creates to drop into midfield and send his wingers running in behind.
For England, this would historically be Bukayo Saka or Raheem Sterling or sometimes Marcus Rashford. But Saka has struggled with injury this season, Sterling’s body has given out on him, and Rashford may or may not start. Replacing Rashford will likely be Anthony Gordon, who is very fast and has scored lots of goals for Newcastle in the past, but also struggled in the Premier League this year. Out of all these wingers, Saka is the biggest gamechanger, and him getting up to speed by the knockouts might be the biggest difference between a relatively early exit and a late run.
Or the second biggest difference, because there’s also Jude Bellingham. Jude’s career has taken a slight dip as Real Madrid struggled to figure out how to accommodate Kylian Mbappé into their galaxy of stars, but he is still a 22-year-old capable of doing just about everything on a soccer field.
But Bellingham has occasionally gotten in his own way for England precisely because of his all-conquering ability. His best international performances came in the 2022 World Cup, when he was the young addition to the squad and played a more defined box-to-box midfield role. At the 2024 Euros, he was freed up to do anything and frequently wound up doing too much. With a new coach and a more defined role as the number 10 behind Kane, Bellingham might once again thrive for England.
Most of all, the reason that England have been in this silverware-less golden period is because their players have been really good. And that remains true, even if some of them are injured or had bad seasons.
Twenty years on from the first time anyone downed a pint of Stella and shouted “it’s coming home,” England are an actually good team that has a real chance to win something. Maybe their fans will remember that enjoying the journey is the point of the song.
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