Is England’s World Cup entitlement unique, or common in other countries?

[WhenTheDustSettles]

Do other countries have the same sense of entitlement to winning the World Cup as we do? All this 30, now 60, years of hurt thing, all the comments about how useless England are, that's gone on for as long as I can remember, how rubbish the managers are etc.

I've never researched it but we can't be the only country to have only won one, or zero World Cups.

Is it unique to England? Or our supporters, I doubt the team has the same sense of entitlement.

Entitlement?!! I don’t know a single football fan who isn’t completely realistic about England’s chances in a World Cup.

Believing we might have a chance of winning it isn’t entitlement, nor is being enthusiastic about us doing well.

And “coming home” is just a reflection of the fact England invented the sport and is cribbed from a song. It doesn’t mean England thinks it’s entitled to the World Cup.

Other countries are equally - or possibly sometimes even more - obsessed and hopeful! Football mania/fever is certainly not confined to these shores!

As someone who has attended many world cups and European championships abroad I can assure you there is absolutely no entitlement amongst the travelling fans. Quite the opposite in fact.

The vast majority are very pragmatic and realise our position in the footballing world order.

One big reason for the lack of confidence over the years has been the ever diminishing pool of players we have to choose from.

The premier league is full of foreign players which of course means fewer English players at the top level. The PL has the lowest % of home grown players of all top flight leagues. This isn’t replicated elsewhere. Most others have nearly twice as many.

In addition to this very few English players play abroad compared to other nations which results in England having far fewer top flight players to pick from than is the case for every other major footballing nation.

I'm not a football fan at all, but even I don't see what the problem is with people/countries entering a big competition and hoping that they might just win.

We're so used to being self-deprecating about most things British - our weather, our food, our politicians - that I think it makes a nice change to be positive and hopeful about something.

The only caveat for me is that diehard optimistic football fans in England - where the men's team hasn't won the World Cup for 60 years - aren't also the ones who bang on about how we should not bother to enter Eurovison, as 'we're never going to win', where we very nearly won it 4 years ago!!

Also we dont see it with Rugby yet rugby was also invented here

Rugby was played at fee paying schools, football was played at state schools. Over 4 million people officially play football each week. Nowhere near that number play rugby. You'll see kids in parks playing football with coats as goalposts, you won't see them playing rugby except in rugby hotspots.

Football followers outnumber rugby followers by many times.

hahaha! this.

Winning something once is hardly evidence of an entitlement 🤣

Also- look at the fans from other countries in the stands, they are just as passionate about winning - you are absolutely crazy if you think they dont care if they win or lose. People are literally crying and screaming in the stands

I start every season believing my team will
win promotion. That usually dissipates a month into the season 😂

There's no entitlement, there's hope that's tempered by 60 years of not winning it

think you've misheard / misinterpreted the song lyrics. It's not "the trophy's coming home" it's 'football's coming home' - a reference to the fact that this is where the sport started and that when the song was originally released in 1996 it was for the Euro's competition, which England were hosting.

The problem is that you're treating "home" as a literal ownership claim when most people use it as a cultural reference.

I've never met an England fan who genuinely believes other countries have less right to win because football was codified in England. The song is famous precisely because it's self-depreciating: "30 years of hurt" isn't exactly a lyric dripping with entitlement is it?? its actually self depreciating and quite humble with references to dreaming

You're absolutely entitled to dislike the song, but I think you're arguing against a meaning that most England fans don't actually attach to it.

Only 6 countries really play rugby - and 3 and a quarter of them are us

As others have said, “football’s coming home” is nothing to do with winning or expecting to win. The song was written for Euro 96, which was hosted here, hence literally “football’s coming home”. Presumably it keeps getting wheeled out again and again because it’s a banging song.

Have you been to other countries?!

Didn’t he mean anti English in the last sentence, or are anti English and anti British the same thing?

This perhaps says more about me that anything else but I remember having a lightbulb moment in my 20s as I realised that it wasn’t “our” trophy and, on occasion, a plucky other country came forth and stole it from us. Nor was it the case that the team had made mistakes and lost us the trophy. Actually, they had got as far as they could but been beaten but teams which were better than them.

Sorry, wholeheartedly disagree.

I would rather see a team from any of the UK countries win than France, Argentina, or any other country.

Scotland supporting ‘anyone but England’ is a horrible attitude.

FWIW re rivalries, England don’t really consider the Scots that way, certainly don’t support ‘anyone but Scotland’. It’s not like Scotland are a credible football rival anyway. Rugby a different story, we certainly punch above our weight there.

I’m not talking about football obsession - agreed that plenty of countries have this. I’m agreeing with OPs point that there is a sense of entitlement- I’d argue that the English colonial history breeds an often unconscious sense and culture of ‘we are inherently winners and the best of the best’. Which is applied to football and other things.

We're going to lose
We're going to lose
We're going... we're going to lose

Let's be honest, folks
Don't get above our station
60 years we've failed
To win it for our nation

We know that we're rubbish, we've no hope
It's such a stupid tro-o-o-ope: to be thinking
We could win; put that thought in the bi-i-i-n!
There's no way, we can't play
As well as Bra-zil...

Let's not waste our time
Stay at home complaining
That we'll never win
And it's always raining...........

I don't think it's a sense of entitlement, it's just were crap at winning and taking the pee and being self deprecating is something w do

I think the “football’s coming home” is supposed to be slightly tongue in cheek, it’s just the fans don’t get it.

But it was written for Euro 96 that was in England, so in that sense it came to this country in terms of the tournament being here.

Interestingly, it used to be widely accepted in the UK that football was invented in Italy, it was just that having the first railway network allowed us to have the first league and therefore standardised rules.

You mean to other countries want to win the world cup? Yes they do.

I think its because England really should be better than they are. The premier league is the most watched sports league in the world, there's a truly spectacular amount of money coming into it every year. Yes, a lot of it goes on foreign players, but a lot of it is used to bring up homegrown talent.

Based on that, England should be able to find a squad of really consistently good players, and yet, every tournament they turn up and are a bit mediocre really.

The song is famous precisely because it's self-depreciating: "30 years of hurt" isn't exactly a lyric dripping with entitlement is it??

It might not be entitled, but it's a bloody stupid lyric nonetheless.

England won the World Cup in 1966, they were World Cup holders until 1970 when Brazil won the tournament in Mexico. Unless England and the English were somehow "hurting" while being actual World Cup winners and holders for 4 years, then "30 years of hurt" makes no sense whatsoever.

It really should be "26 years of increasing frustration", but they chose Ian Broudie to co-write the song, so decent songwriting clearly wasn't a priority.

Yes. All of them 😂

@Koala17 I really enjoyed reading your post. Thank you.

Only six countries play rugby and three and a quarter are us....

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