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It is 5am in Berlin Hauptbahnhof, the city’s central train station. Eyes are bleary, heads are fuzzy, no one has slept and the sun has risen for a new day.
Hundreds of Italy and Croatia fans are making their way back to their hotels after catching the 3.40am train from Leipzig, where their teams played out a dramatic 1-1 draw.
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Croatia’s fans are glum, silent and sobering up; they are almost certainly out of the tournament. The Italians, despite the early hour, still have a song or two in them, quietly at first, just one or two guys singing. And then it starts: “Na na na na na naaaa na na naaaaa na na na.”
You can probably guess just from the na-nas what it is. If you have attended or watched pretty much any football match in the past eight years, you will have heard Freed from Desire, the infinitely catchy Eurodance number that had one life as a huge hit in the late 1990s and then another in 2016 as a viral terrace chant about Wigan Athletic striker Will Grigg being on fire and terrifying defences.
Northern Ireland’s appearance at Euro 2016 introduced the chant to Europe and, well, the rest is history.
Come 2024 it still endures, echoes and reverberates around the continent, be it club or international level, or clearly at the European Championship in Germany where it is played in stadiums before matches, after goals, at full time no matter which teams are playing, or just sung on the terraces, in pubs or on train station platforms at 5am.
Only Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes can compete with Freed from Desire in its status as European football’s unofficial soundtrack.
The song is well known and universal. Its creator, writer and singer? Less so. There are reasons for that, which we will get to.
Those Italians singing Freed from Desire in Berlin train station may not even know the song is by a compatriot of theirs, born in Milan, named Gala Rizzatto. You may be reading this in New York and not know that Gala resides there.
So who exactly is the woman behind the anthem for a generation of football fans? What does she think of Will Grigg? Does she even like football? The Athletic asked her.
“No, honestly, I don’t get sick of talking about it.”
Well, that is a relief. Gala has graciously given up an hour of her time to conduct a video interview from her original hometown of Milan, before she jets off to Bulgaria.
There are interesting questions to ask her about Freed from Desire, such as her relationship with the song, its evolution in the public’s consciousness, or why it is so popular in football.
Es geht nur gemeinsam 🇩🇪💯 Danke für eure tolle Unterstützung bisher – am Samstag in Dortmund alle mindestens nochmal genau so!!! 💪🏼🔊🎷🎶 pic.twitter.com/4HuZNASod5
— Ilkay Gündogan (@IlkayGuendogan) June 24, 2024
There are naive questions too, such as whether Gala is still sent clips of people or crowds singing it.
“Tim, come on,” she interrupts, with a wry smile. “Like, only 400 a day since like 2011. That’s all I get. This phone, oh my gosh. I see cricket, padel, gay marriages on a mountain, literally anywhere and anything. It’s all on my phone. Female marches in Paris is definitely one that sticks out, it embodies everything for me.
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“Freed from Desire is a song of sports and of the people and the energy of the masses. I’ve seen it in LGBTQ marches, rugby… I’ve seen it in too many environments that it’s not just soccer to me.”
Gala, who was brought up in a football household in Milan (the only question she doesn’t answer during the interview is whether it was an AC Milan or Inter house) where matches were shown on TV all the time.
She is happy, then, that the song is so associated with football and sport.
“Sport is so important,” Gala says. “It saves a lot of kids and, like music, it brings people together from different backgrounds, religions, genders, they come together and they play or they watch.
“It takes you away from vice, from drugs, from depression and it brings everyone to the same level.
“It can also reveal big societal problems in racism, people commenting on black players, at least in Italy, but it brings out these conversations about racism, rich, poor, women’s soccer… I heard, in the Paris Olympics, all the women’s soccer is going to be last to celebrate it (the women’s gold medal match will be played a day later than the men’s).
“So feminism, everything, all the important points are discussed through sport and also music.
“I was very happy when England women used the song, the lions…tigers…the Lionesses! So that of course gives me more satisfaction because it’s my story too. So when I see female sport using it, it’s like; ‘Woohoo!’ Best of both worlds, women and sport.
“My father watched soccer all the time. When I was growing up in Italy it was very present, on TV all the time and to be honest kind of imposing because I wanted to watch something else. But sport is beautiful.”
🎶 FREED FROM DESIRE 🎶
Three minutes of pure vibes from our #Lionesses at Trafalgar Square on Monday… pic.twitter.com/GfAxzAfs3J
— Lionesses (@Lionesses) August 4, 2022
Initially released in 1997, Freed from Desire was one of three top 10 singles from her debut album Come into My Life.
It was a hit across Europe, as was Let a Boy Cry, which she performed on BBC show Top of the Pops, plus the single Come Into My Life which reached No 1 in Italy and Spain.
And then? The music wilderness. Gala may have dedicated her life to the world of music, but the world has not heard her music because, at the height of her fame, she broke the contract with her former record label Universal in the late 1990s.
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She can’t go into details, but essentially she signed “the worst deal you could sign in the history of music” which didn’t exactly see her make much money from Freed from Desire’s global success.
Since 1998 she has made and released music independently. Aged 30 she was told she was too old for record labels (“they just wanted to know when I’d last had a hit”), an indie, independent artist, flying under the radar while her song permeates around the global mainstream.
“I had no guidance, I had to learn it on the job and went through some big mistakes and the biggest was my contract. There were four singles in the top 40 from that album, three in the top 10, but I got f***** by the system.
“I started saying, ‘What the hell am I going to do?’, I was an independent in New York City. Slowly now I’m doing shows, not just because of the sport, it started before and I think there’s this energy that constantly got put into the song.
“And I know there is a justice in this (its revival); for me I see it as the people want justice because I couldn’t go against the label for 20 years with lawyers, I didn’t have the money.”
Freed from Desire was written in New York, where Gala had moved aged 16 to go to boarding school and then New York University where she took a minor in gender studies. “It was so ahead of its time. For me, it was about feminism; I wanted to be a boy so badly, but it was the power that men had in society I grew up in that I wanted. Power, freedom, I wanted to walk in the street and not be looked at and commented on like I was constantly as a kid in Italy.
“There are three or four levels to the song and they correspond to sport, too. I was told as a kid I wouldn’t be able to dance because I had a bad back, then the month I wrote Freed from Desire I got a second opinion in New York and they told me I could still dance, so I reconnected with my passion.
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“And then New York represents society, and seeing the injustice I hadn’t been exposed to in a more cuddled world in Italy, all white people in my class, all the same level, then in New York someone is dying in the street and people are walking over them, billionaires up the road, homeless people with no shoes in the snow, they walk next to each other.
“This made me want to write the song. So it’s a Buddhist concept, talking about going against the rat race, ‘My lover’s got no money but he’s got his strong beliefs’; dance, music and community.
“It was about the observation of society, falling in love for the first time and reconnecting with dance.
“I thought this in sport, you have overcoming personal challenges, athletes who recover from injuries and setbacks like I did with dance. The energy behind Freed from Desire is resilience.”
For some who feel the song’s energy so purely and lives its meaning in real life, how happy is Gala that it has now reconnected with millions more people via sport and football?
“I love it because I approached the lyrics in a timeless way. The lyrics are eternal so it doesn’t surprise me at all. The whole philosophy of my writing is to be outside time, so people connecting with it isn’t a surprise. Buddhism has existed, like, forever.
“The themes in the lyrics are issues that people had in medieval days; love, work, survival, happiness. It changes but it’s the same s***.”
Gala is no newcomer to football, given the house she grew up in. But incredibly, given Freed from Desire’s association with the sport, she did not attend her first live match until 2022.
She did not pick a bad game to start — the World Cup final in Qatar, Argentina v France, sat with some of the French players’ families.
She had performed at a fashion event the day before the final, albeit she debated whether to attend.
“There was Post Malone, DJ Snake and Khalid and me,” she says.
“Everyone was like; ‘Don’t go to Qatar’ but I chose to go. I thought, if Beyonce doesn’t go, it’s a statement. She’s going to say in the New York Times; ‘I am not going to Qatar’. That’s a statement. But if I don’t go, nobody gives a s***, nobody knows who I am, literally. Nobody would interview me like if I’m going or not… the song is famous, but not me.
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“So I’m like, ‘I wanna go’, for me this is a statement to go and to work, as a woman at my age, that’s my victory.
“Plus, in the lineup of musicians, oh OK, they’re all men. So I’m happy to represent.
“We went to see the game, my first one ever live and it was so good and so emotional. For that to be my first game I’m like; ‘Holy s***’.
“I knew Argentina were gonna win because the power of those fans was so immense. When I walked into the biggest stadium I’ve ever experienced in my life, their screams and chants were so powerful compared to the French, it was like there was a dragon present. A beast, a legendary creature… and they didn’t stop for the whole game! If they lost, they would still chant. It was a power. I was like, these people are moving the players with air.
“The French were very elegant! And nice. But Argentina, just so much power, you want those fans.”
There was a possibility Gala would perform Freed from Desire had France won the match (France is one of the countries where the song is most popular) so she attempted to not watch the game, which basically proved impossible as the two sides played out a thrilling 3-3 draw before Argentina won on penalties.
How has she not been invited to a game before?
“Honestly, you don’t understand, I’m so indie and off the radar,” Gala laughs. “The song might have been on the radar for a while, but I haven’t been on people’s radar for many years. I’m on my own radar! So someone is going to get in.
“But yeah, I see it’s very hard not to get emotional at these games. They’re very engaging and powerful, a lot of human beings with energy and desires. I don’t know anything about soccer but I felt Argentina wanted to win it more. Also with Lionel Messi, it felt like all the players wanted to give it to him too. Not that he didn’t earn it himself. It was beautiful.”
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Gala has gigs lined up throughout the summer, some are 1990s revival events which she has been involved in organising and she is performing in Morocco — in Casablanca — for the first time because, well, a local team plays Freed from Desire a lot.
It is a seemingly never-ending cycle but Gala, who has signed to new management, retains the infectious energy and optimism she had when she wrote the song all those years ago.
“If you want the Hollywood movie, there is justice. As the song says, there is no justice in the world, but if you want the magic in this story, I felt like the people brought Freed from Desire back… and f*** yeah.”
And with that Gala is off. No wait, we almost forgot… Will Grigg?
Grigg played for Northern Ireland at Euro 2016 – where the song had a rebirth (PHILIPPE DESMAZES/AFP via Getty Images)
“Oh, I love that energy! He’s totally the underdog and that reflects the song too. And my life. I got f*****, I disappeared, I didn’t have a career and I put out records on my own for 20 years with a label called Matriarchy which is me, with this phone. Some people would say I lost, I could have had 25 records released.
“But Freed from Desire happened for the people and that’s beautiful. If you put energy out, it gets transformed… I’ve been working on this since the day I was born.
“My destiny is to live the meaning of this song until I drop dead.”
(Top photo courtesy of Gala)
