From Bobby Charlton's Comb-Over To Corden And Barlow - A Cultural History Of The England World Cup Song

 Gary got on with Michael like a house with rising damp

 

With the Premier League winding up this weekend, attention will soon shift to The World Cup and everything that goes with it. Of course it’s the football that matters, but it’s impossible to ignore the media paraphernalia that goes with it, of which the primary example is of course the World Cup song.

For this year’s effort the FA have shown their usual imagination by roping in the one man ‘Can I have a Knighthood?’ campaign that is Gary Barlow, and the result is like every electron in the former Take That man’s body – bland.

Despite the fact that it’s not even a new song or a substantial reworking of an old one, ‘Greatest Day’ seems to perfectly fit our footballing era. Like most things involving Barlow it’s ever so slightly insipid – Our Gary’s default expression being that of a man who’s mildly narked that you haven’t used his favourite brand of tea bag. Like most X-Factor montage songs, any inspirational qualities it may have once had have been destroyed by a thousand saccharine shots of teary meetings with elderly relatives. Rather than a battle cry to go into battle for Harry and St George, it’s the sort of song that might inspire you to do your tax returns early (or possibly not in Gary’s case).

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 Greg Dyke cutting the tape at Brentford, where he was once Chairman

So the FA commission has met, and come up with proposals to ensure that the England football team turn into world-beaters. The centrepiece of this is an attempt to create a new 'League Three' of Premier League B-Teams between League Two and the Conference, with these teams allowed to be promoted up the pyramid to League One.

What’s clear is that the problem it’s intended to solve is a very real one - young players who find themselves signed to top-tier clubs tend to be shut out of making first team appearances, hindering their chances of progressing to another glorious penalty defeat. Yet Greg Dyke’s proposals are at best a reward for terrible behaviour that misses the point – and at worst a folly that could entirely destroy the English game as we know it.

The Premier League and its clubs seem to regard the behaviour of Cartman from South Park towards his mum as a model – they behave badly and against the interests of the England team, then the FA offers to reward them by changing the rules to attempt to justify and mitigate their actions. Any suggestion that things shouldn’t work in their interest would no doubt be greeted with a “But Greg….” Followed by a tantrum after which they’d get what they want.

The Premier League's negotiating tactics

Yet to explore why this isn’t just a bad idea bounced around a boardroom one needs to go back to the start of the Premier League, the promises made and what’s happened since.