A soccer homecoming

Even Americans indifferent to soccer1 can easily become bogged down with the England national team. The common language and the erstwhile “special relationship” between the two countries means that the “can England finally win it all again?” narrative is as heavy as the smell of ash and petrichor after a wildfire and an ensuing June shower during every World Cup.

Since 2018, the speculation has been given the extra glow of “Is it coming home?”, a narcissistic reflection that shimmers with both the British2 origins of the sports and the forced nostalgia for the 1996 song “Three Lions,” written for the occasion of UEFA Euro 96, which England hosted and lost in the most England way: On penalty kicks after a 1-1 draw with Germany. Its chorus incorporated the tournament’s slogan: “Football’s coming home,” a grand pronouncement that sounds comical to American ears, which likely envision the anthropomorphized rugby-inspired ball of American football driving down a highway.

The 1960s were a different planet

England won its first and so far only men’s World Cup final in 1966. Here are some facts about international soccer in 1966:

  • There were no yellow or red cards.
  • You couldn’t make tactical substitutions.
  • You could backpass the ball to the goalkeeper for him to pick it up.
  • The offside rule was even stricter.
  • Argentina, France, and Spain had yet to win their first World Cup finals.

Since that time, England has never gotten back even to the final, let alone won it. Smaller nations such as the Netherlands, Croatia, Poland, and Sweden have come at least as close to winning the title in the last 60 years3 as England, the birthplace of “football.”

CRT memories

I began watching England’s 1998 round of 16 match against Argentina on a CRT TV at my parents' house, and finished it on an even bigger tube TV at my grandpa’s house, next door—it was such a drawn-out match that I had to walk over to the latter for dinner, during which I got my first experience with the added 30 minutes of extra time and the penalty-kick shootout. Likewise, I saw them eliminated by Brazil in 2002 in my parents' living room, by Portugal in 2006 at my grandpa’s, by Germany in 2010 on a grainy feed in my first real apartment, and by Croatia in 2018, France in 2022, and Argentina in 2026 in my house. Even as someone who’s not an England fan, the country’s struggles with its own game have been apparently unmissable.

Soccernomicist

Shouldn’t they have won more, though? That’s the sentiment underlying the pervasive coverage that’s so disconnected from their actual success. Probably not: Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski’s Soccernomics, first published in 2009 as Why England Lose, has exhaustively cataloged the reasons why England hasn’t matched its 1966 title: It’s smaller than Germany, Italy, France, and Brazil, its teams disproportionately attract blue-collar players who differ from those in other countries, and it’s been unlucky.

But the narrative of “This is England’s year, right?” persists, and the games are spectacles that look back at us from TV to TV in our different homes across time, in part because, well, it’s all in English. We get it at some level, without having to decode extra linguistic and cultural context like we would with a place like Switzerland.

Just as Kuper and Szymanski were confident they didn’t have to worry about England winning the 2010 World Cup right after their first edition was published, so too can I be confident in my answer to my title question: England don’t win because they can’t beat elite national sides at the World Cup level.

An elite failing

Let’s define “elite national sides” as the seven other nations that have won the men’s World Cup: Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Uruguay. Since winning the 1966 final, England is winless in eight knockout matches against this group, with three exits apiece against Argentina and Germany and one apiece against Brazil and France.

Twice England has also failed to escape the group stage, and in each time the failure was caused by a member of this group: They failed to get a victory against Spain in 1982 (the 0-0 draw wasn’t enough) and lost 2-1 to both Italy and Uruguay in 2014, going out before they’d even played their final match against Costa Rica. Overall, England has been eliminated at least once by every one of its fellow champions. Its only exits that came to sides outside this group were to Portugal in 2006 and Croatia in 2018.

By the time the 2030 World Cup commences, England’s title drought will have reached 64 years. I’d take a bet that even a country that hasn’t won yet—Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium, or the Netherlands being the best candidates—will win their first before England wins its second. But England is hosting Euro 2028, so expect “Three Lions” to get more nostalgia, even if “62 years of hurt” sounds like someone whining about lower-back pain rather than reminiscing about soccer.

  1. “Soccer” is maybe the most British word imaginable: A piece of 19th-century Oxford slang derived from the Football AsSOCiation, the name of the sport’s national governing body. It helped distinguish this type of “football” (association football) from others (such as rugby union football). ↩︎

  2. England’s decision to compete separately from Wales and Scotland has undoubtedly hamstrung its ambitions and success. ↩︎

  3. “Three Lions”' most famous line is “30 years of hurts/never stopped me dreaming”. Already, the song is closer to the 1966 final than to the present day. ↩︎