'It's Coming Home' England football song: Explaining meaning, lyrics, how it started among Three Lions supporters

There's no doubt about it: 'It's Coming Home' will echo through the streets, pubs and homes of England from kickoff to the very end of any competition, whether in glorious success or bitter failure.

The iconic chant, irking rival fans at major tournament after major tournament, is England's true soccer anthem – however far 'Sweet Caroline' mania spread during Euro 2020. 

Those three words capture the exhausting experience of an Englishman during major tournaments. Dreams of glory, painful memories, weary pessimism, stress, pride and usually... more pain. 

The only time it resulted in glory came in the summer of 2022, as England Women lifted the European Championships on home soil. The Lionesses got the nation into a fervour for women's football, and followed it up by making the final of the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, taking 'It's Coming Home' to the opposite side of the planet with them. 

More: England's World Cup squad: The players charged with bringing football 'home' in Qatar

It all began in 1996, when the European Championships came 'home' to soccer's motherland, the U.K.

It was the first major tournament to be held in Britain since England lifted the 1966 World Cup on home soil at Wembley Stadium. 

English comedians David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, who hosted a much-loved football TV show at the time, teamed-up with The Lightning Seeds, a rock band from Liverpool, to write a song marking the occasion. They called it 'Three Lions.' 

The '90s was a draining period to be an England fan, and the scars of that decade have yet to heal. The aforementioned range of emotions hit a dizzying peak in the summer of '96. 

The buzz and feel-good atmosphere around the 1996 tournament is still talked about in