LONDON • The fate of the rescheduled Euro 2020 tournament will not be decided until March but Uefa is hoping that vaccination efforts will allow organisers to stick to their original plan for June's pan-European tournament.
The 24-team, month-long showpiece, a major revenue generator for Europe's football governing body and national federations, was postponed by a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The 2020 edition, the brainchild of former Uefa president Michel Platini, was planned to be the first staged across Europe rather than a single nation or joint hosts.
The host cities are Glasgow, Dublin, Bilbao, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Munich, Rome, St Petersburg, Bucharest, Budapest and Baku, with the semi-finals and final set for London's Wembley.
Uefa had hoped that a year-long wait would have allowed fans to be present at games but, with most matches continuing to be held behind closed doors currently, that prospect depends on an improvement in the virus situation.
Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin is hoping vaccination programmes, moving at different speeds across the various host countries, will be the key to sticking to the original plan.
"Vaccination has started and I think we will be able to have full stands in the summer," he said in a recent interview with Serbian newspaper Informer.
"For now, the plan is to play in all 12 countries. Of course, there are back-up options in case a country has a problem."
But the Slovenian accepts that there may need to be some juggling of the hosting arrangement and perhaps different levels of stadium capacity use.
"We are ready to organise competitions in 11, 10 or nine cities... and even only in one country, if necessary. However, I am 99.9 per cent sure that we will have the European Championship in all 12 cities, as planned," he said.
Uefa confirmed it has been working on four operational scenarios - for full stadiums, 50-100 per cent capacity, 20-30 per cent capacity, and games behind closed doors.
The host cities have been asked to come up with two to three plans out of those options and it is possible different approaches will be taken in each venue.
"A decision on which scenario will be applied individually in each city during the tournament will be made on March 5, 2021," Uefa said in a statement.
Given the broadcast deals in place for the tournament, Uefa has a strong commercial interest in the event taking place as planned.
Even if the entire tournament had to be held without fans, it would still allow Uefa to meet its contractual requirements and avoid a major financial hit.
One threat to the tournament would come if, like last year, domestic leagues had to stop due to the pandemic, pushing back the club competitions.
So far, European leagues, with strict protocols in place for secure games without fans, have been able to continue playing, although plans for the return of fans have been affected by the recent third wave of Covid cases across Europe.
REUTERS
