What was the first FIFA World Cup song?
It actually took FIFA several decades to finally oversee the World Cup’s official pop song.
Big business now, though. Launched in 2021, the global football governing body teamed up with Universal Media Group to launch FIFA Sound, its very own music wing boasting a quasi-record label, A&R scouts sent to snoop on the UMG roster directly for the next big footy hit, and lending a curatorial hand in what numbers are spun in the grounds of big games under their remit. The current year is the biggest yet for the body’s emerging album venture, Official FIFA World Cup 2026 Album, featuring 18 tracks and over 300million streams around the world.
Yet, curiously enough, FIFA’s Entertainment Department didn’t authorise a legit pop theme for any World Cup tournament until 1990, when the then-president João Havelange gave the thumbs up to Giorgio Moroder’s turgid ‘Un’estate italiana’ fist-pumper, split into three different versions targeted for Italian, Spanish, and English-speaking audiences.
The BBC shoved FIFA out of the way for Italia ‘90’s enduring musical memory, however, lifting Luciano Pavarotti’s famed ‘Nessun Dorma’ aria for their TV coverage and leading to the Italian tenor’s performance with Plácido Domingo and José Carreras on the eve of the final, watched by an estimated 800million worldwide.
FIFA wised up and began courting the more contemporary of the pop world. Splitting subsequent tournaments with official songs, anthems, and occasional mascot numbers, before long, Ricky Martin would unleash a burst of Latin spectacle on France ‘98 with his ‘La Copa de la Vida’, Anastacia’s ‘sprock’ yodel charged ‘Boom’ for Korea Japan ‘02, but the heavyweight of FIFA pop landed on South Africa ‘10 when Shakira and the Freshlyground’s ‘Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)’ topped charts all over the world and stands as FIFA’s most streamed song ever.
So, what was the first World Cup song?
For Argentina ‘78, FIFA did reach out to famed composer Ennio Morricone to write ‘El Mundial’, which stands as the World Cup’s first commissioned anthem; then, as we know, the first official FIFA song was Moroder’s ‘Un’estate italiana’ in 1990
However, every tournament since the beginning has enjoyed some kind of localised song that, while never directly arranged by FIFA, became heavily associated with the respective host nation and partially recognised in the FIFA song canon. The 1930 World Cup debut in Uruguay adopted Omar Odriozola’s ‘Uruguayos Campeones’ from four years earlier as the lyrical foundation for the nation’s rousing murga piece.
For the subsequent tournaments, the tradition of orchestral works or marching military bands was swept aside for a piquant mix of rock and roll and a little swing. Writing the number specifically to inspire some footy patriotism during ‘62 Chile, local tunesmith Jorge Rojas corralled his Los Ramblers ensemble to pen the rockabilly and referee whistled ‘El Rock del Mundial’.
Chile came in third place that year, Brazil defending their world championship status, but ‘El Rock del Mundial’ would score Rojas a winner, to this day the country’s biggest-selling single of all time. FIFA would later acknowledge Los Ramblers’ pioneering footy hit, writing in their Weekly publication in 2014: “The catchy combination of clapping and the shrill of a referee’s whistle turned it into an instant favourite,” and acknowledging that the Chilean hit was when the FIFA pop song was “first put into practice”.
