A Guide to Music in Football

From the songs that have become staples in the stands to the official anthems that soundtracked unforgettable games, via the players who’ve made the move into music to those immortalised in lyrics, we’re delving into when football and music have crossed paths—just in time for the Euros.

Reflecting on how his song “Seven Nation Army” had been adopted by Italian fans as an unofficial anthem when their country won the World Cup in 2006, Jack White said, “Nothing is more beautiful in music than when people embrace a melody and allow it to enter the pantheon of folk music. As a songwriter it is something impossible to plan.” One half of The White Stripes had perfectly described the magic and mystery of the soccer terrace chant, just as “Seven Nation Army” shows the shapeshifting and unforeseen journeys that songs can go on when they are embraced in the stands, passed from fan to fan, team to team, country to country, soundtracking the highs and the lows, the euphoria and the anguish. The lithe, seven-note riff and primal thump of “Seven Nation Army” had originally been turned into a chant by the fans of Belgian team Club Brugge, with AS Roma’s supporters transporting it to Italy after the teams faced off in a UEFA Cup game in 2006. By the time the Azzurri won the World Cup that summer, the entire nation was hollering along to it. In the years since, it has grown and grown to the point that’s it’s not a White Stripes song anymore. It’s a soccer song. White knew that it had nothing to do with him. You can’t plan for or plot which songs are going to be appropriated on the terraces. There is no formula. It could be a country classic that prompts a sing-along on the fans’ bus to an away game that continues into the ground and, bingo, as with Liverpool fans and their stirring renditions of “Ring of Fire” on the way to winning the Champions League in 2005, or a forgotten dance gem excavated from ignominy because the chorus has the perfect amount of syllables for your star striker, as it went with Gala’s 1996 song “Freed From Desire” (you’ll have likely been serenaded by a “your defense is terrified” if you’ve set foot inside a stadium over the past decade). There are no rules about what makes a great chant, no genre to adhere to. Terrace chants make for the wildest and most psychedelically varying playlist you can imagine: where else could you hear one chant based on the Cuban patriotic number “Guantanamera,” originally released in 1929, next to one that reworks Pet Shop Boys’ “Go West,” next to a chant based on the 1907 hymn “Cwm Rhondda”? And yet, if you were to hear a group of fans chanting, “There’s only one…,” or “1-0 to the…,” or “you’re not singing anymore,” you’d be hearing all of those things. The chants that take off share something at their core. It’s in the simplicity and the emotion, in a melody that can connect in a direct and universal way. They could be defiant, yearning hooks that make you proud to belong, like Liverpool and Celtic fans hollering out “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” or something more defiant and celebratory, such as France fans singing “I Will Survive” in support of their national team, a tradition that goes back to their World Cup win in 1998. They need to be adaptable too—both “Go West” and KC and the Sunshine Band’s “Give It Up” provide ample room for wordplay within one short, sharp line, while “Moliendo Café”—more commonly known in Europe as “Dale Cavese”—went from being a chant belonging to fans of Argentina’s Boca Juniors to one sung by supporters ranging from Egypt to England, Chile to Sweden, Turkey to Ireland. A brilliant soccer chant is a tune that a fan sitting two blocks away can hear and get involved in without having to be walked through the middle-eight. It’s why there’s never been a math-rock song that’s taken off on the terraces, but “Pop Goes the World” by Canadian synth-poppers Men Without Hats is sung wholeheartedly by soccer fans across South America and is the tune to the main chant sung by supporters of the Japan national team. None of the creators of these songs wrote them thinking they would be sung in unison by thousands of ecstatic (or goading) soccer supporters. The fans in the stands are the ones who transformed them and, once they stuck, you’d never hear them in the same light again.

The mark of how well an officially sanctioned football song does can be found in its legacy. Whether it’s a track written for a tournament in general or tied to a specific team, the same rules apply: have you heard it again since? Does it come back to life every time a World Cup or a Euros rolls round? If so, it’s a winner. The best modern example of an official mega-success is Shakira’s “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)”. Written by the Colombian pop superstar alongside South African band Freshlyground and sampling the Cameroonian makossa group Golden Sounds, it was anointed by FIFA as the official anthem for the 2010 World Cup but its jubilant, Afropop groove has gone on to have a life of its own long after the last ball was kicked. One of the best-selling singles of all time, “Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)” isn’t just a football song among Shakira’s many hits, it’s one of her biggest tracks. During the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, it re-entered charts as a new generation of fans discovered its infectious rhythms and joyous hooks. Meduza, OneRepublic and Leony’s official anthem for Euro 2024 has a lot to live up to. The sense of celebration at the heart of the track is crucial to its longevity, just as it is with Baddiel, Skinner and The Lightning Seeds’ “Three Lions”, a song written for the European Championship in 1996, but which has since seeped so impactfully into the national consciousness that for many it’s simply known by its devastating three-word hook: “It’s coming home”. In the same way as “Waka Waka…” tapped into South Africa’s vibe of buoyancy, “Three Lions” was built on classic English pathos and against-all-odds hope. That’s a feeling shared by “Together Stronger (C’mon Wales)”, Manic Street Preachers’ roaring official anthem for Wales as they marched to Euro 2016, while Dario G’s “Carnaval de Paris”, written for the World Cup in France in 1998, and Magic System’s African Cup of Nations theme “Akwaba” are just the sort of perfect bangers to shake off your pre-match nerves to. Scottish rockers Del Amitri took a different route by tapping into something a little more slow-building and ballad-y in an attempt to galvanise the nation with 1998’s “Don’t Come Home Too Soon”. But maybe it’s just not a time for subtlety—there is nothing subtle about New Order’s classic “World in Motion”, for example. How could there be when the whole thing is leading up to John Barnes’ iconic rap? It might not feature Barnes spitting bars, but the official song to support the Lionesses at the Women’s World Cup in Australia last year does boast an all-star lineup—“Call Me a Lioness” features Mel C, Self Esteem, Wolf Alice’s Ellie Rowsell, Shura and more. Official songs need to have an exuberance about them—Ricky Martin was obviously aware of that when FIFA asked him to write a World Cup anthem and he came up with the lavish Latin-pop gem “The Cup of Life”. You need to be direct, play the long ball—there’s real ’80s power to “To Be Number One”, the official song for the 1990 World Cup by Italian disco supremo Giorgio Moroder but instead everyone remembers that World Cup for “Nessun dorma!”, the Pavarotti recording used by the BBC as the theme tune to their coverage and later cannily co-opted for official tournament purposes by FIFA. Like some of the official classics mentioned above, it was a song that captured the sense of possibility and excitement, the balminess of a seemingly endless summer which eventually did come to a close. Some of its sounds, though, live on forever…

Asked how it felt to have one of British rap’s biggest songs bear his name, the Brazilian defender Thiago Silva remarked, “Sometimes us footballers lose the idea of the reach and influence we have, so it was a really happy moment for me, really pleasing that there was a song with my name.” Dave and AJ Tracey’s 2016 single “Thiago Silva” was far from the first rap song to namecheck a player but by the time it went viral off the back of a Glastonbury performance in 2019, it had become the emblem of a growing phenomenon for MCs and rappers to invoke the name of their footballing heroes and villains. The callouts range from superstars to squad players: for every track such as Headie One saluting Mo Salah on the pulsing beats of 2018’s “Know Better” or Zidane on the same year’s “Back 2 Back”, there’s AJ Tracey giving Kenyan MLS midfielder Victor Wanyama a shoutout on “You Don’t Know Me”. There’s certainly enough mentions out there to field a very impressive XI: Joshua Kimmich and Nemanja Vidić on Big Zuu’s “Blatant Truth”, Nani on CASISDEAD’s “All Hallows’”, Frank Lampard and Paul Pogba on Dave’s “Attitude”, brothers Kolo and Yaya Touré in the M Huncho-featuring 23 Unofficial song “Recognition”, with Didier Drogba, Carlos Puyol, Luis Figo, Luka Modrić and more all cropping up in AJ Tracey’s “False 9”, a song that would provide a very useful squad. They’ll have to take turns in goal. It’s not just British artists playing the game: German hip-hop is full of rappers paying homage to players. Berlin’s Luciano gives Riyad Mahrez a namecheck on his song “Roli”, Zuna and Miami Yacine salute Zidane on their track “Real Madrid” (as does French rapper Sneazzy on “Skurt Cobain”), Franck Ribéry (and his car) get a shoutout on Capital Bra and Ufo361 2017 track “Ala’ba’ba”. On his 2019 hit “Jack Fuego”, meanwhile, French rapper SDM hails the speed of South Korean superstar Son Heung-min. Meanwhile, who did Irish country-pop star CMAT turn to when she needed to reference someone bald? That’s right, ex-Manchester City legend Vincent Kompany on a song of the same name. But what about the battle of the GOATs? Well, Lionel Messi, is saluted in both Action Bronson’s “Muslim Wedding” and British indie veterans James’ 2014 anthem “Curse Curse” among many others, with Drake balancing it out by giving Cristiano Ronaldo a mention on his track “Blue Tint”.

While it’s a common sight to see players arriving for a game wearing headphones, listening to music as they get in the zone ahead of a match, there are only a handful of players who have taken the leap and made their own sounds. Sometimes, that has been a brief diversion—as it was for Dutch legend Ruud Gullit, who never followed up his 1984 reggae-pop single “Not the Dancing Kind”, or Spurs teammates Glenn Hoddle and Chris Waddle, who hit number 12 in the UK chart with their synth-pop bop “Diamond Lights”, but whose fledgling music career came to an end a short while later when Hoddle moved to AS Monaco in France. Others, like Dutch international Memphis Depay and his side-hustle as a purveyor of slick R&B, have balanced football with a serious music career. Also going from the training pitch to the studio is Woking player Matt Robinson. In the hip-hop world, the midfielder is better known as the MC Kamakaze. They both follow in the footsteps of former USA international Alexi Lalas, who put out a steady stream of Americana-tinged releases throughout his career as a journeyman defender. Then there are those who got into it proper after hanging up their boots—such as Paul McGregor, who followed up his time at Nottingham Forest and Plymouth Argyle by forming the spiky post-punk outfit Ulterior, or former Cowdenbeath defender James Allan, who channelled any sorrow he felt at missing out on the Scottish third division title on goal difference in 2001 into the yearning anthems of his acclaimed indie-rock band Glasvegas. Neither hit the heights on the pitch of legendary French maverick Eric Cantona, though, who unveiled his baritone croon with a debut single in 2023. But even King Eric would bow to former Real Madrid youth goalkeeper Julio Iglesias, who left behind life as a footballer after an injury and became one of the world’s most successful singers instead—since switching careers, he has sold over 150 million albums. But who says he wouldn’t trade it all for a clean sheet in El Clásico?