It was back in the far 1996 when the first version of “FREED FROM DESIRE”, written by Gala Rizzatto (aka simply Gala), Maurizio Molella and Filippo Carmeni (aka Phil Jay), was released.

After 25 years, over 6million records sold worldwide, a diamond record and tens of gold and platinum records, “FREED FROM DESIRE” is back again on top of all sales charts, monopolizing the web and social networks, particularly supported by “Millennials” and “Z Generation”.

Starting as a simple “pub singalong” (one of those sung by supporters who don’t know each other but find themselves hugged, raising their beers and singing the same song), the song turned into the most popular stadium chorus in the world. The amazing melody of this ‘90s Made-in-Italy dance masterpiece gets plaid at a very high volume in every sport event, from football to volleyball, through rugby and basket: it makes us all slaves to the popular, yet hypnotic “Na Na Na Na Na Na”.

Lyrics are sometimes amended, supporters dedicate the refrain to a player, coach, idol of the moment: from Will Grigg to Jamie Vardy, from Dušan Tadic to Harry Maguire till Stefano Pioli. But first things first.

It was the 2015-2016 football season of the British third division, basically our “C League”.
The Wigan’s team, based a few kilometers away from Manchester, is very close to promotion, dragged by Northern Irish striker Will Grigg, who already scored 25 goals in League One.
One day Sean Kennedy, a Latics’ enthusiast supporter (Latics is the pseudonym for Wigan Athletic Football Club) uploads a video as tribute to his beloved striker. The assumption was that Will Grigg would be “on fire”, meaning in good shape. First was used Alicia Keys’ “Girl on fire”: good adaptation, catchy verses, but not engaging enough to imagine it played in a football stadium. At minute 1 of his video comes the masterpiece destined to write the history: Gala and FREED FROM DESIRE give life to “Will Grigg’s on fire”.
Everything’s perfect: the new lyrics in the verse (“He will score goals, Will will score just more and more, He will score goals, He will score them all”) as well as rhymes and consonances.

From his room, in front of a webcam, Sean would never ever imagine the impact this new music harmony would have on half of the football world.
As soon as the track reached the Championship (B League), it rapidly spread among supporters, who have already embraced it and made it a hit in the UK. You can hear it in every video, sung in the streets. It even reaches the national team: it is the anthem of Northern Irish supporters during Euro 2016 and ends up engaging anyone. Thanks to this chorus, the unknown Will Grigg become a symbol player of the European Championship with no one minute played.

In 2015 Gala and all FREED FROM DESIRE authors (including the singer-songwriter herself) approved an adaptation of the original work for that which became the theme song for Euro 2016: Will Grigg’s On Fire. This is the only operation legally approved, made in favor of the charity JOSEPH’S GOAL, raising funds to help a young supporter of Will Grigg and the Irish National Team, who is affected by a severe disease.

But the story is not over, in fact this is only the beginning.

At that time Will Griggs and Jamie Vardy were playing in championships of very different categories but this made no difference to British supporters. Leicester City’s striker had freshly won the weirdest national title in the history of British football, Hodgson called him to the national team, and he magically started scoring goals also wearing the Three Lions jersey: three goals in three pre-Euro friendly matches and one in the first match of the final phase, more than that against Wales, after taking over in the second half of the match. The chorus “Vardy’s on fire” inevitably came to life, and it also perfectly matched the original track’s melody.

Since then, many fan groups took the idea and adapted their chorus on the melody of “FREED FROM DESIRE”. One of the most recent, famous, and well-done examples was made by AC Milan “Curva Sud”, who simply replaced “Freed from desire” with “Pioli’s on fire”.

Right before AC Milan Curva Sud, Lazio’s Curva Nord made new verses for their “Lazio is on fire”. The Biancocelesti supporters’ poetic vein has been along for the amazing ride of the team, led by Simone Inzaghi, during the whole 2019/2020 season but their title-winning hopes died out due to the pandemic.

This is a global and cross-cutting phenomenon: Lille’s supporters sang on the notes of Gala’s song after winning the Ligue 1 title (ripped from Paris Saint-Germain); those of Ajax pay their tribute to Dušan Tadic praising his name in their chorus when celebrating their victory in Eredivisie on the ground of the Joahn Crujiff Arena; during FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar Saudi Arabia supporters go wild after the victory over Argentina dancing the whole song and, after every goal scored by the British national team, the refrain of FREED FROM DESIRE gets played. The French National Rugby team has been using for years the song as soundtrack of its enterprises.

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