Rebecca Mead has a go at the 1996 song whose official title is “Three Lions”: “It has been suggested that the song is about the heartbreaking condition of being a fan, which, in soccer-centric terms at least, it is. But it is also a song about English defeat — or, to put it more precisely, English defeatedness. … It’s a song about decline and regret and loss, about the tempting allure of resignation — the English emotional default — and the terrible pain of hopefulness.”