Soccer Songs

Whether you call it "football," "fútbol," or "soccer," you know it's not just the world's most popular sport — it's also the best. And bringing you the best songs that sport has to offer is our g-o-o-o-o-a-a-a-a-l-l-l-l-l! The hooligan-friendly rowdiness of Chumbawamba's "Tubthumping" is big with the ever-hopeful Brit fans who long, desperately, for a return to their glory days of 1966. Blur's fuzzed-out alt-rock anthem "Song 2" blew up big when it was included in EA's FIFA 98 videogame, and has been adopted by dozens of teams since. And who could have ever guessed that the French would have turned to Puerto Rican hottie Ricky Martin's "La Copa de la Vida" ("The Cup of Life") as the overall official theme for the 1998 World Cup final they hosted (and, incidentally, won).

In Next Steps, we leave Europe for the warmer climes of South America, home of some of soccer's biggest stars . . . and songs.

While the game was invented in England, many would say it was perfected in South America. And two of the players most responsible for creating that opinion, Argentina's Diego Maradona and Brazil's Pelé, get their props by being immortalized in anthems such as Mano Negra's "Santa Maradona" and Arakatuba's "Pelé," respectively. If the Tamba Trio's "Mas Que Nada" sounds laid-back, Brazil's team is anything but; they have won the World Cup five times, more than that of any other nation. Argentine soccer fans, longtime rivals — nah, let's make it enemies — of the Brazil side will probably prefer Aires Tango's crowd-pleasing "Cancha de Futbol," complete with the sound of cheering from an actual match.

In our Deep Cuts, we bring the sport back home, with some lovable mop-tops, a classic rock powerhouse, and a very silly troupe of comedians.

The Empire may be nothing but a memory, and England's side hasn't won a Cup since L.B.J. was in office, but it's still the sport's official home, and we have the songs to prove it. The weepily sentimental "You'll Never Walk Alone," originally featured in the 1945 Rodgers & Hammerstein musical Carousel, might seem a strange choice for a sports anthem, but it became the unofficial theme of the Liverpool Football Club after Gerry & The Pacemakers recorded it in 1963. If there's a sport outside tiddlywinks that hasn't fallen prey to the stadium-wide, arm-in-arm PDA charm of Queen's "We Are the Champions," we haven't heard of it. And if, as the British side seems to have done continually for more than four decades now, your team loses, there's nothing better to pick up your disconsolate spirits than the relentlessly cheery Monty Python, whistling their way through "Always Look On the Bright Side of Life."

Here in the good ol' U.S.A., we call the game known pretty much everywhere else on the planet as "football" (or "fútbol" in Spanish-speaking countries),"soccer." But no matter what you call it, it's the most popular sport in the world, and it's inspired, and borrowed, some of the coolest music in the world, from mop-topped British Invasioneers to latter-day sambanistas. In fact, there are just about as many styles of soccer music as there are styles of play. Whether it's the quadrennial cycle of Copa Mundial, Coppa del Mondo, Coupe du Monde — what we call the World Cup — or just your favorite league play, there's just no better way to spend 90 minutes . . . plus extra time. And even if you're no budding Pelé, Messi, Beckham, or Ronaldo, you can still have a world-class soundtrack to the world's favorite sport.