Nine years ago, European football’s premier organization UEFA announced its hugely ambitious plan of hosting the 2020 edition of the European Championship across 13 different cities all over the continent.
Like most sporting events last year, that plan was dealt a fatal blow by the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, UEFA continued to seem ambitious when it decided to postpone Euro 2020 last year but decided to stage the event across 12 cities now, instead of the initially decided 13. They had drawn up extensive plans but before the start of the tournament next month, Euro 2020 will officially take place across 11 cities all over Europe, separated by four time zones and up to over 4500 kilometers.
The city of Brussels was removed from the list in December 2017 because of delays in building the Eurostadium. Dublin was removed in April 2021 as there was no guarantee from the Irish government for spectators to attend. Spain also changed the venue from Bilbao to Seville in order to accommodate fans in the matches hosted there.
When then UEFA President Michel Platini announced the plan in 2012 as a romantic one-off event to celebrate the 60th birthday of the European Championship competition, little could the organization have predicted its significance in today’s world ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The multi-city affair will offer fans to attend the matches in their own countries due to the travel restrictions imposed because of the pandemic. Nine of the 11 host nations – with the exception of Azerbaijan and Romania – qualified for Euro 2020 which will give their fans the opportunity to attend at least two home games.
“We have a big advantage that we have a lot of home teams,” UEFA tournament director Martin Kallen told The Associated Press.
The Puskas Arena in Hungary could accommodate as many as 50,000 fans as the home side take on World Champions France and European Champions Portugal in Group F. Russian authorities decided to allow at least 30,000 people in the Gazprom Arena in Saint Petersburg for the matches to be hosted there.
Last year, UEFA hired Switzerland’s top public health official, Dr. Daniel Koch to oversee the pandemic response and act as an advisor on Euro 2020 crowd issues. Koch recommended that hosting the event across various cities would be a better option than having 24 sets of fans from different countries move around in a single country.
“I think it was a wrong estimation to think it’d be much easier if (Euro 2020) was only in one (place),” Koch told the AP
Having different hosts gave UEFA much more flexibility and divided government response and attention on issues related to health and public safety.
