“Soccer’s coming home,” they sing, to the tune of the Skinner and Baddiel classic.
It’s a chant of choice for American fans ahead of the World Cup showdown, poking fun at their English opponents.
We heard it from the crowd watching the University of Maryland take on Fairleigh Dickinson University.
The gag is, of course, the replacement of the word “football” with “soccer” – for UK listeners, it’s a lyric that could only have been written in fingernail on a blackboard.
As supporter wind-ups go, it’s at the benign end of the scale, far removed from the terracing attrition in the land where the game began. Some cultural traditions, it seems, take longer to transfer.
US soccer is football, but not quite as we know it in the UK, certainly not as we speak it.
It’s where players “turn and burn”, wear “cleats” on their feet, not boots; take “PKs”, not penalties and, yes, take liberties with the very name of the game.
From fall guys to contenders
However you word it, the US…
