The anticipation is tangible in the streets, in the bars, on the beach, and even in the local shops. A young Italian man asks a shopkeeper of a small, nondescript convenience store that mostly sells crisps if he has a Lamine Yamal top for sale. Surprisingly the man delves into a bin bag from under the counter and peruses through a bunch of in-no-way-illegitimate football shirts that he is definitely licenced to sell, before producing a red Spain shirt.
Another happy customer. Advertisement In the street, a group of topless Englishmen are singing about Scotland getting battered. Everywhere you look, people are drinking, shouting, singing.
It’s loud, it’s boisterous and it’s lively. Some people are stumbling and slurring their words. Music is blaring.
The Athletic is offered cocaine by one man and an invite to a strip club by another. It’s 2pm. There are seven hours until kick-off.
Welcome to Benidorm. Outside of Berlin, you would be hard-pressed to find a higher concentration of English and Spanish fans than in the partly picturesque, partly a-scene-from-every-English-town-centre-at-3am-on-a-Friday-night seaside resort of Benidorm, on Spain’s east coast. That is more by accident than design for this particular occasion — the Euro 2024 final — because, well, English or British people are always here.
It’s the most popular place in the entire world for Brits to visit on their holidays (ahead of Tenerife and Dubai). More than 800,000 British people flew to Benidor.
