The Best And Worst Football Songs – Top or Flop of the Pops?

There was a time when if a team reached a major final, or a top tournament, they would often release a song to commemorate the fact.

Some of those football songs proved to be surprisingly decent. Others were indescribably bad. 

This kind of put the end to football songs in recent times, but we do have some fantastically good, and indescribably bad examples to look back upon.

So for football songs, we are including: –

• Any song made by a team or group of players.
• Any song made by a pop group on behalf of a team or to represent that team. 
• Any song made purposely for football fans and events.
• Any song released by professional footballers.

With both the Euro 2024 Finals and the Copa America 2024 in full swing, now seems a pertinent time to review these football songs that were either hits, or misses!

So which songs will come out as our top of the football pops, and which football songs will be top of the flops? 

Let’s take a closer look and find out!

Football Songs – Top of the Pops

1.Nessun Dorma – Luciano Pavarotti (1990 World Cup)

Gazza turning the Dutch defence inside out, David Platt’s volley against Belgium, Lineker equalising against Germany, Chris Waddle’s shot off the inside of the post. The 1990 World Cup had it all and it had the best ever song as its anthem. Or rather the BBC did for its World Cup shows. Choosing Nessun Dorma was a stroke of genius. Music which genuinely was spinetingling when you first head it and remains so. 

2.Vindaloo – Fat Les (England 1998 World Cup)

Vindaloo may have lost the battle with Three Lions 1998, but for me it is the far more enjoyable song. It doesn’t dwell on the maudlin, it doesn’t take itself seriously, it is a fun, enjoyable song that has had a really bad remake since (thanks, Paddy McGuinness and company… No need for that). The original is still a cracker though. “Where you come from, do you put the kettle on?… Kick it!”

3.Three Lions – Baddiels, Skinner & Lightning Seeds (England Euro 1996, World Cup 1998)

Sacrilege I know for some fans, but while I loved the original Three Lions in 1996, it’s been padded out time and time again for tournaments and the phrase “It’s coming home” now has an air of desperate despondency about it. 30 years of hurt has now become 58 years of hurt and that is much harder to scan. 

4.World in Motion – England & New Order (1990 World Cup)

Take ¾ of Joy Division, add a couple of England stars who could be bothered to turn up to a promised video shoot and what do you get? Without doubt one of the best football songs of all time. Even John Barnes rapping was cool and it became one of the big hits of 1990. Just not quite as big as number 1. 

5.The Anfield Rap – Liverpool (1988)

This song is awful. So awful it could have been in the Flop ten. But here’s the thing. It was supposed to be. The Liverpool 1988 team were not just brilliant, but they understood the key thing with football songs. They are crap. So make a crap one and enjoy it and make it fun. So they did and it worked a treat. Craig Johnstone, designed of the Adidas Predator boots, even wrote the lyrics. “I’m very big down under, but my wife disagrees…”. Great line!

6.Back Home – England 1970 World Cup Squad

The first proper football song for an England team and there was none of this promising to win the cup, the boat race, the Olympics and the Eurovision Song Contest. No, the current World Cup holders simply sang, that we’ll be thinking about them when they are far away playing in Mexico. We were, until Peter Bonetti replaced injured Gordon Banks in goal and chucked three in for the Germans to eliminate us at the quarterfinal stage. 

7.Ossie’s Dream – Chas ‘n’ Dave & the 1981 Tottenham Hotspurs FA Cup Final Squad

“Ossie’s going to Wembley, his knees have gone all trembly…” sang Chas ‘N’ Dave in this iconic FA Cup Final song. True Spurs fans, the famous cockney duo gave us a right old knees up at the old Joanna and even gave Tottenham’s famous Argentinean star a line in the song where Ossie sang “..in the cup for Totting-ham…”. Just annoying it was compatriot Ricky Villa then who was the hero for Spurs, scoring twice in the replay to land them the cup over Manchester City. 

8.Yma o Hyd – Dafydd Iwan (Unofficial Welsh team Song)

The Welsh know a thing or two about community singing at football matches. Not only is the National Anthem spine-tinglingly good, this folk song from Dafydd Iwan has been adopted as the unofficial Welsh Football Team anthem, and it is incredibly powerful when sung by 40,000 Red Dragons. 

9.Sven Sven Sven – Bell and Spurling

Do you remember that crazy night in Germany in 2001 when England smacked five past Germany with just one in reply? That night remains the pinnacle of English football since 1966 for many and it was immortalised in this quirky little ditty from Bell and Spurling. With some genuinely funny moments, interspersed with commentary from the match, it’s a winner!

10.Glad All Over – Crystal Palace 1990 FA Cup Final Squad

If you are going to release a Football Song, make it simple. Stick to a song your team is known for, that is catchy, easy to sing and has a refrain all the fans can join in with. Crystal Palace’s 1990 FA Cup Final squad nailed it with this rendition of the Dave Clarke 5 classic Glad All Over. 

Football Songs – Flop of the Pops

10.Move Move Move (The Red Tribe Groove) – 1996 Manchester United Squad

A song and video so bad that you can scarcely believe what you are seeing. For a brilliant team at the time, United made some god awful songs and this is right there with them. With Lyrics so bad Jeffrey Archer could have written them, the fact that the video was as bad as the song is scarcely believable. 

9.Diamond Lights – Glenn Hoddle & Chris Waddle 

It is bad enough when footballers make football songs. It is even worse when they try to become pop stars too. With no discernible vocal talent, Glen Hoddle and Chris Waddle released Diamond Lights and even appeared on Top of the Pops without a football shirt or tracksuit in sight. The fact that they took themselves so seriously is what makes this just so cringeworthy. 

8.Head over Heels – Kevin Keegan

Another great example of why footballers should stick to using their feet, rather than their mouths for fame. Kevin Keegan was European Footballer of the Year (Ballon D’or Winner nowadays) when he released this god-awful saccharine-sweet self-indulgent claptrap. It reached number 31 in the UK, but number 10 in Germany, where Keegan was playing at the time for SV Hamburg. If he’d strapped on some lederhosen he may have made it to number 1. 

7.Ally’s Tartan Army – Andy Cameron (Scotland 1978 World Cup song)

To the tune of “were on the march with (enter your manager’s name here) army” Andy Cameron’s strident vocals that Scotland were gonna win the World Cup didn’t quite ring true as the all-conquering Tartan Army were held by Iran, lost to Peru and despite beating Holland in their final game, went out of the tournament at the group stage. 

6.Easy Easy – Scotland 1974 World Cup Squad

Tommy Docherty’s Scotland were ever the optimists, Easy Easy, they said ahead of the World Cup in Germany. Only it wasn’t, and after being drawn in a group with Brazil, Yugoslavia and Zaire (who Scotland struggled to beat after Yugoslavia put nine past the Africans), it actually wasn’t that easy after all. 

5.This Time (We’ll Get It Right) – England 1982 World Cup Squad

I did consider this song for the proper top ten, but once again it fell into the flops of the pops. Not because of the musical side of things, but simply because of the promise that was delivered in the song. 

They’ll get it right, they said in the song. Well, they did in the Group Stage, winning all three games, but after drawing 0-0 with Germany, they could only draw 0-0 with Spain in the second phase, meaning Germany progressed into the semi-finals and we didn’t. We didn’t get it right and haven’t done so since 1966.

4.Fog on the Tyne – Gazza & Lindisfarne

Oh Gazza. Why didn’t you stick to football. A genius with the ball and the best England player of the modern era bar none. His PR team and advisors should have been sent to join the Foreign Legion after advising Gazza to make this to cash in on his World Cup 1990 fame. “Sittin’ in a sleazy snack bar, sucking sickly sausage rolls…” Unbelievably it only gets worse from there. 

3.All The Way – England 1988 European Championships Squad

Hopes were high for England ahead of the 1988 European Championships. After missing out in 1984, they’d qualified for Germany and celebrated with the release of the entirely optimistic “All the Way”.

Memorable for some laughably bad acting from Tony Adams, Tony Cottee and Steve McMahon driving pretend cars and boats, the song was dismal, but not as dismal as England who went all the way to the bottom of their group and came home with three defeats in three. 

2.Here We Go – Everton 1985 FA Cup Final Squad

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this song. It is still fondly sung at Goodison Park to this very day and the lyrics, while simplistic, are not too bad.

However, the travesty was this ill-advised appearance on Wogan, where the entire Everton squad run through the audience and onto the stage to sing the song while the audience waved Everton scarves and Terry Wogan and a baffled Patrick MacNee tried to join in with a scarf of their own. 

1.Come on you Reds – Man Utd & Status Quo

United fans enjoyed some of the best Premier League teams in history during the 1990s and 2000s in particular. 

Unfortunately, their pre-eminence didn’t extend to the musical offerings as they teamed up with rockers Status Quo (famously from London) for this effort. That’s akin to Chas ‘n’ Dave putting together a cockney knees up for Newcastle United. 

And strangely, yes, it does sound like every other Status Quo song. 

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