1996 - thirty years of hurt

Baddiel, Skinner & The Lightning Seeds, 'Three Lions'

I wrote an earlier version of this article in 2016, on what would’ve been my dad’s birthday – he died in 2010. It’s got little things dotted all the way through about nostalgia and looking back fondly on events we weren’t entirely present for. Although writing at the time as someone trying to cope with their dad’s death almost six years on, 2024 me still feels a little bit pissed off that 2016 me could be judgmental and unreasonable about 1996 me.

I don’t know what it is about this country and its sporting expectations. Since 1990 the England men’s football team has been in two Euro finals and two World Cup semi-finals.

(For even more perspective – since 2018 the England men’s football team has been in two Euro finals and one World Cup semi-final.)

Yet for some reason since the success of 1990, this level of performance has often translated into the expectation – nay, the birthright – that some fans seem to think the team is absolutely going to raise a tournament trophy in every single even-numbered year.

I don’t know why but this blind assumption was lost on David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, lyricists of the 1996 smash hit song which asked if enough ‘years of hurt’ had passed yet for them to win something.

You didn’t know the half of it, lads.

Following the team’s second ever semi-final appearance in a World Cup at Italia 90, perennial tournament favourites (apparently) England went out of Euro 1992 at the group stage. They then went on not to qualify for the 1994 World Cup, such was their dominance of the sport. Lucky for us all, then, that in 1996 England qualified for the European Championships…automatically, as hosts.

In England, culturally at least, everything was feeling a bit different. New Labour was parked up outside Number Ten, waiting for the Tories to stop pissing about with the furniture and hand over the keys; and the charts were filled with chest-beating Britpoppers chasing out the last vestiges of dreary, introspective, Americanised pop and alt-rock. Things just have not been the same since. But that’s the nostalgia talking.

In terms of footballing merchandise, I’d made a deal with the devil that was Coca-Cola. For the low low price of a couple of dozen ring pulls (and probably a couple of dental fillings) I touted a red t-shirt with the slogan ‘Eat Football, Sleep Football…”. Except…well, I didn’t, not really. But a popular chart combo played on the Coke adverts named Collapsed Lung had me convinced otherwise.

But ‘Three Lions’ was what really clinched it for me that year; shit was looking up. Bit weird for an eleven-year old to feel that way, but yeah.

‘Three Lions’ was probably the first England football song that’s actually got a singalong part for the fans in the stands to adopt – and so they did, chanting it throughout the tournament and even more vocally during wins over Scotland, the Netherlands and Spain. Even eventual winners of the tournament Germany loved the song; Jurgen Klinnsman has mentioned its frequent singalongs on the team coach during the tournament.

The Lightning Seeds was cruising the waves initially thrown up by the resurgence of British guitar music; they’d had some mainstream success with songs like ‘Lucky You’ and ‘Sense’. The FA approached main man Ian Broudie to provide the music for their official Euro 96 anthem. Broudie agreed on condition that David Baddiel and Frank Skinner provide the lyrics.

Bit random; at the time Baddiel and Skinner were the hosts of a weekly late-night comedy show on BBC2 called Fantasy Football League. Baddiel had achieved cult fame in The Mary Whitehouse Experience on BBC TV and radio, while Skinner was an up-and-coming comic who had previously acted and written for Channel 4. Their double act came organically through living together for a span of time. Though recognisable to comedy fans beforehand - particularly the ones who caught their fantasy football act on TV soon after closing time - it was still a bit of a gap between that Friday late night slot on BBC2, and a co-writing credit on the number one single in the UK. The show’s profile subsequently rose and saw them become figureheads in the footballing community.

My memories of the tournament as a whole are quite solid; although I wasn’t buying out entire shops of their VHS cassettes to tape the matches like I did for France ‘98, I do remember a fair few standout games.

I remember Paul Gascoigne’s goal against Scotland, a beautiful thing. I also remember just as well David Seaman’s penalty save from Gary McAllister, because Macca was the Leeds United captain, and seeing him being capable of missing a pen was like finding out there’s no Father Christmas.

I bought the official release of the Netherlands game on VHS, and I watched it a lot, but I still only really remember that Shearer goal – and I remembered that from the first time around anyway.

I remember nothing about Spain in the quarters. A nostalgic media more than filled those gaps in for me because Stuart Pearce scored in a penalty shoot-out. The whole narrative of the costly penalty miss at Italia ’90 against Germany meant absolutely nothing to me at the time, so this wasn’t a thing.

And I remember watching the semi-final with my dad, as England went out on penalties to Germany. I remember not really caring, because it was only penalties, and it was only England.

I remember being away with school on the night of the final, and overhearing two teachers talking about the result the next day.

Looking back, I really don’t think Euro 1996 was a particularly strong tournament. Then again, the Euros rarely stoke the flames on nostalgia like a World Cup does. Maybe if England had won a European Championship instead of a World Cup in ‘66, we’d all be much more invested.

The song has, of course, retained all its appeal, even surviving a 2022 reworking as a Christmas-themed crack at the top of the pops while the World Cup was on in Qatar. It had its regular place on my late-Nineties tapes, and probably helped The Lightning Seeds shift a few copies of their Best Of album, including the one that came down my chimney one Christmas.

But the song only seems to add fuel to the fire of expectation that English fans are due another tournament win — despite having come desperately close more times in the late six or so years than the two decades before. That’s the frustrating thing about ‘Three Lions’ — the tipping point where hope becomes expectation.