Band admit England World Cup song killed their career and was 'worst thing they ever did'
Let’s roll back 20 years. Amy Winehouse is in the charts with ‘Rehab’, Leona Lewis wins The X Factor, Cars is out in cinemas and the WAGs truly are born.
Yep, the 2006 World Cup arguably saw the OG line up of the Wives and Girlfriends with the likes of Coleen Rooney, Abbey Clancy, Victoria Beckham and Cheryl Cole out in Germany.
But that football tournament was also accompanied by other cultural moments like Embrace’s track ‘World at Your Feet’.
Ok, yeah, maybe you don’t remember that as well.
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And the band now actually say the song killed their music career at the time as it goes down as one of their biggest regrets.
Released on 5 June 2006, it was the England squad official song and peaked at three in the UK Singles charts.
Looking back, Embrace reckon making the song ‘clipped the wings’ of their music.
The indie rock band, made up of Danny and Richard McNamara, Steve Firth, Mickey Dale and Mike Heaton experienced a ‘disappointing’ aftermath to the track.
Rick admitted to Daily Star: “It's one of my biggest regrets doing that, and smoking. If I could live my life again I wouldn't go near it with a barge pole it and I would advise anybody else thinking of doing it not to do it either."
The guitarist said that when the offer initially came up, the label advised that it wasn’t a good idea but the band decided to go for it.
“I think they we were on a short list of one band so we thought, 'Ah, great, man. Everyone's gonna get behind it, and it's gonna be such a uniting sort of experience, and gonna be good for us and the country,’” he explained.
However, Rick said they experienced ‘snobbery’ in the response and the support from the English FA wasn’t the strongest.
"The FA gave us, like, four tickets to see a match in Germany, there's five of us in the band," he claimed. "You know what I mean?”
The rocker added: “There was, like, talk that they wanted a hip hop song, rather than indie song.
"A bit of like snobbery going on there, nobody wanted to be in the video, we asked, like, you know, some of the old World Cup squad if they wanted to be in the video, and they wanted an extortionate amount of money.”
Rick claimed players were ‘snubbing’ the band and experiences left them with a ‘really nasty taste’ as they found a lack of support.
There were also critiques at the time that the song was ‘too slow’.
And after making the World Cup song, he reckons it turned the tide of ‘opinion against us’ with their music. “It clipped the wings of the album, really,” he said.
Not long after this, the band entered an extended hiatus, until releasing a sixth album in 2013.
The LADbible Group has contacted the English FA for comment.
England's 2026 World Cup squad
Forwards
9 - Harry Kane (Bayern Munich)
7 - Bukayo Saka (Arsenal)
18 - Anthony Gordon (Barcelona)
20 - Noni Madueke (Arsenal)
11 - Marcus Rashford (Barcelona, loan from Manchester United)
22 - Ivan Toney (Al-Ahli)
19 - Ollie Watkins (Aston Villa)
Midfielders
4 - Declan Rice (Arsenal)
8 - Elliot Anderson (Nottingham Forest)
10 - Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid)
21 - Eberechi Eze (Arsenal)
14 - Jordan Henderson (Brentford)
16 - Kobbie Mainoo (Manchester United)
17 - Morgan Rogers (Aston Villa)
Defenders
3 - Nico O'Reilly (Manchester City)
5 - John Stones (Manchester City)
2 - Ezri Konsa (Aston Villa)
6 - Marc Guéhi (Manchester City)
15 - Dan Burn (Newcastle United)
24 - Reece James (Chelsea)
12 - Tino Livramento (Newcastle United)
26 - Jarell Quansah (Bayer Leverkusen)
25 - Djed Spence (Tottenham Hotspur)
Jess Battison