REMATCH OF THE DAY
One of England’s best Euro 96 games will be recreated in London in May
Euro 96 was one of the most remarkable summers in modern English history, but spare a thought for those who were too young – or abroad, or in prison – to experience it. Not just the games, but the whole Britpop-fuelled spirit that pervaded the nation’s bars, before they became gastropubs and stopped showing football. If only there was a way to go back.
Enter Jack Pop and Chris Webb, who loved that era so much they’re recreating it. Rematch of the Day is a one-off one-dayer in which people relive the sights, sounds and smells of Euro 96. It’ll happen on May 2 at London’s Boston Music Room and Dome, where Pop – usually a record label boss – staged a recent festival.
“Chris came down to that, shortly after going to a Secret Cinema thing,” he says. “At the back of the room we got a bit drunk and decided to do a football equivalent, right there.”
Their idea is similar to those immersive cinema affairs in which a converted warehouse or theme park tries to convince your brain that you’re really in
Star Wars or Blade Runner or whatever; full-on sights and sounds everywhere, then they show the movie.
“No one’s done a football one,” Pop continues. “It’s those other moments that we really want to recreate, that whole evocative summer mentality: the drinks, the look, the bands.”
Tickets cost £19.96 – they aren’t revealing which game will be the focal point, but it’s hardly the final. Elsewhere they’ve let some other nuggets slip: classic ’90s comestibles (“Hooch will be free-flowing”), and a replica trophy. The first Rematch task was signing the band whose anthem soundtracked every ad break that summer. Pop traces his music career back to “that moment I saw the Coca-cola advert”, adding, “I fell in love with Collapsed Lung. EAT MY GOAL. Always relevant. EAT MY GOAL! I listened to that Euro 96 compilation over and over. It’s probably what made me start a label.” Collapsed Lung are on board. Of course, you need a good dress code, too. They’re unearthing favourite jerseys: Pop has Cameroon’s Italia 90 kit, while Webb has a Euro 96 England top, but “Teddy Sheringham has clumsily daubed his name on it”.
How should their guests start that day, to immerse themselves in the 1996 spirit? “Chuck on an episode of The Big Breakfast,” says Webb, “then grab yourself a tasty Pop Tart or bowl of Kellogg’s Banana Bubbles, wash it down with Sunny Delight, pull on your best ’90s football gear, cover yourself in Lynx Africa or Impulse’s Into Glamour, hop in your Ford Mondeo and blare out some Britpop bangers.” Morning glory indeed.
More details at sportsreillustrated.co.uk – for a chance to win two tickets, email fourfourtwo@futurenet.com with the name of Euro 96’s Golden Boot winner