"I thought, 'Gee, I wish John was still here.'" That's Bill Danoff — co-writer of "Take Me Home, Country Roads" — watching American soccer fans belt his 1971 song back at the US national team after a knockout stage win over Bosnia and Herzegovina. Not bad for a song that was never supposed to be a soccer anthem.
The origin story is almost absurdly low-key. Ahead of the USA's second group match at this year's World Cup, FIFA chief strategy officer Amy Hopfinger wanted a song — something that could create a shared moment between players and fans. She got two options from FIFA's head of event production. "Country Roads" won the coin flip, essentially. It played after the 2-0 win over Australia. The fans sang it. The players looked up. And that was that.
From playlist suggestion to Pochettino's office
Manager Mauricio Pochettino was reportedly playing the song in his office within days of the Australia win. That's the kind of detail that tells you everything — this wasn't manufactured from the top down. The song found its moment and the team grabbed it.
It also survived its first real test. "Country Roads" played after the loss to Turkey and largely fell flat, which actually helped it. When it roared back after the Bosnia win, it stopped being a fun gimmick and started being a victory anthem. Context matters.
The West Virginia connection, for anyone wondering, is essentially nonexistent. Danoff is from Massachusetts. He wrote the lyrics while driving through rural Maryland with his wife. He landed on West Virginia because "Blue Ridge Mountains" and "Shenandoah River" were, in his words, "songwriter words." The song was always about the feeling of country roads, never about any particular state.
A sports anthem that keeps finding new homes
"Country Roads" has been doing this for a while across sports. Manchester United fans have sung a personalized version since 2014. NFL crowds in Germany pick it up regularly. West Virginia University has claimed it as a home-game staple for decades. The song has a rare quality — it sounds like a singalong even if you've never heard it before.
Denver never got to see any of this. He died in 1997 at 53, when a small amateur-built plane he was piloting crashed off the California coast after he struggled to locate an unusually positioned fuel valve and ran out of usable fuel. He had over 2,700 hours of flying experience. Danoff's wish that Denver could have been in the stands to see this is a genuinely good one.
"I'm a songwriter. I was looking for words," Danoff told NBC 4 Washington. Fifty-five years later, those words are being sung by a soccer squad that plays nowhere near West Virginia, after wins at a World Cup on the other side of the country. Songs find their people in strange ways.
