Football Favourites

Raise those scarves aloft and sing whether you're winning or not . . . Queen's "We Are the Champions" is a fine way to open up those pipes, while England's Euro '96 anthem "Three Lions", by the Lightning Seeds, contains a sweet melody but the bitter memory of a semi-final exit at the hands of Germany. Samba away your blues, England fans, with the universally uplifting "Mais Que Nada", forever associated with the silky skills of Brazil.

Find some sky blue rock 'n' roll, and an eternal supply of bubbles, in Next Steps.

It all starts to get a little partisan here — "Wonderwall" came from the pen of Manchester City supporter Noel Gallagher, while West Ham owns "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles", a former Broadway musical number introduced to the club by former manager Charlie Paynter in the 1920s. "The Official Colourbox World Cup Theme", apparently, was originally intended for baseball but was released to coincide with the '86 World Cup in Mexico.

So many World Cups, so many hopeful team songs . . . in Deep Cuts.

Football's all about sky-scraping victories and cruelly dashed hopes — mostly the latter, of course, as England fans will be reminded whenever they hear the naively optimistic "This Time We'll Get It Right" (from the '82 Spain World Cup). At least Embrace's happy-sad combination of melancholy and ecstasy on "World At Your Feet" somehow anticipated the blow of the 2006 exit . . . and the pill can always be sugared with the Pythonesque comedy of "Don't Mention the World Cup".

Glorious highs, crushing lows, and the combined voices of a thousand tuneless, football crazy choirs . . . it's all here in this virtual stadium of chant — your very own Maracana of melody, your Wembley of warble — and along with the old school rabble rousers (Lonnie Donegan's "World Cup Willie") we've included a techno-net-buster (Oakenfold's "Beautiful Goal"), an operatic masterpiece ("Nessun dorma", as performed by Pavarotti and forever linked to Italia '90) and a dazzling burst of jumpers-for-goalposts joy ("World In Motion"). He shoots . . . he scores! One-nil to the iTunes!