On Saturday, the England men’s football team took to an uneven field of play at the Raymond James Stadium, in Tampa, for a World Cup warm-up game against New Zealand. As the players stood to attention on either side of the halfway line, a coliseum that had in the past rocked to the American energy of three Super Bowls was filled with the canned sound of the most uninspiring piece of music I’ve ever heard.
On this sweltering afternoon in Central Florida, not only did the crowd at the half-full stadium fail to give accompaniment to the instrumental dirge of our national anthem, but at least half of the players kept schtum, too. Standing on the touchline, the national team’s animated German-born manager, Thomas Tuchel, looked as if he was more likely to burst into flames than into song.
As our American hosts might say, enough already. When it comes to a chorale intended to unite the country, God Save The King is unfit for purpose. As well as being the euphonic equivalent of a prune and Quaalude smoothie, as a national anthem it isn’t even worthy of the name. Instead, with its entreaties to a deity in which most of us don’t believe, it is merely a love song to a monarch.
Even in its abbreviated form, the damn thing seems to drone on for at least a week. Honestly, I shudder to think what might happen were its full six verses to be played by mistake in the New World (that’s America, not this publication) in the coming weeks. Even if England win the World Cup, the team will be on the plane home by the time it finishes.
Although usually content to turn a deaf ear to the presence of this musical blight on the national stage, football is the hill on which I am willing to die. I think it’s time we agreed that a new national anthem is required. Unlike Flower Of Scotland or Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau (Land Of Our Fathers), the United Kingdom-wide God Save The Que… sorry, King, isn’t even the sole property of the English.
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When it comes to the beautiful game, the disconnect is by now surely too big to ignore. Not only does the national team resemble the multiracial hue of England at pavement (rather than palace) level, but the players gracing the stadiums of North America represent the logical conclusion of the meritocratic ideal. With a ball at their feet – or, failing that, a ball hoofed 60 yards into the penalty area – they are quite literally the best of us.
But there they were, in Tampa, enduring an ode to the lottery of birthright. Never mind excellence and work rate, God Save The King demands subservience to a head of state whose position was secured by winning an egg-and-sperm race in someone else’s body.
It jars, is all. From a nadir of terrace racism and thuggery, the national football scene has emerged as a unifying force of extraordinary cohesion. In a country that seems to be at war with itself at all other times, the journey of its players at major tournaments affords a taste of what it’s like for a people to be at peace with themselves. Even the bald fact that Eng-er-land haven’t actually won anything during this time is consistent with our collective character.
For me, it’s bliss. As a Barnsley supporter, every other summer, I’m granted the right to align myself with a team capable of better than a 16th place finish in League 1. We all are. In exuding an energy that seems different from a St George Cross hanging limp from a lamppost in the thick of winter, regardless of colour or gender or sexual preference, an England shirt – of which I have two, each bearing the name and number of my hometown hero John Stones – looks good on everyone who wears it.
This unity reminds me of two striking images. In 2021, in the hours before Gareth Southgate’s team lost to Italy in the final of the European Championships, at Wembley Stadium, the nation both laughed and clutched its pearls at the sight of a fan with a lit flare between his arse-cheeks. As well as “banging a load of powder,” Charlie Perry confessed to being “on the piss since half eight in the morning and had had at least 20 cans of Strongbow”.
Three years later, at the conclusion of a cricket match between India and Pakistan, at Edgbaston, a clip of rivalrous supporters cheering television images of England’s Euros quarter-final victory against Switzerland was seen by more than nine million people. Turns out that the country isn’t quite as riven with sectarianism as certain actors would have us believe.
But let’s have it right: these otherwise disparate people were brought together by the England football team. Buttressed by waves of indifference and contempt, the House of Windsor had nothing to do with it.
As it so happens, on the national stage, there is already a precedent for eschewing God Save The King. Rather than mouthing antiquated platitudes, since 2010, victorious athletes representing Team England at Commonwealth Games have instead stood proud to words that celebrate the nation as a whole rather than a Royal line that reigns over it.
It goes like this: “I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, ‘til we have built Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land.”
Ian Winwood is the best-selling author of Bodies: Life & Death In Music
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