Deutsche Welle (English edition)
Opinion: UEFA must bite the bullet and give Euro 2020 to England
Even with Britain's successful vaccine program, it is a race against time to have Wembley at least half full for the Euros. But other host cities have no realistic chance of having supporters, says DW's Mark Meadows.
There is too much uncertainty regarding the hosts for June and July's European Championship, even after a deadline passed for UEFA to be informed about cities' plans to allow fans.
It is time for European football's governing body to finally realize what has been apparent for some time, the COVID-19 pandemic is not going away.
Hosting the tournament in 12 cities across the continent, from Bilbao to Munich and Copenhagen to Bucharest, no longer makes sense given travel restrictions, quarantines, rising cases and fear. Munich will also have another chance when Euro 2024 is held in Germany.
UEFA should hand the whole tournament to England for two reasons. First, London's Wembley was due to host the semifinals and finals anyway, along with England's three group games and a last 16 game.
The second reason is the suc
cess of Britain's vaccine program compared with other European countries. Cases and deaths have been falling steadily there and the goverment already has pilot projects planned for April and May where thousands of fans will return to football stadiums.
Cutting it fine
Other countries are nowhere near this stage, even if the Dutch — who have Amsterdam as a Euros host — have made some progress. While we are here, can we stop calling it Euro 2020? It is 2021 and UEFA's pretense that the tournament has not been delayed by a year is weird. We can just call it the Euros or European Championship.
But even in Britain, they are cutting it fine if they want at least a half full Wembley when England seek revenge for their World Cup 2018 semifinal defeat to Croatia in their opener on June 13, before facing old rivals Scotland five days later.
At the moment the plan is for the FA Cup final at Wembley on May 15 to have just 21,000 fans when capacity is 90,000. It is all part of a series of test events looking at whether vaccine passports and coronavirus testing for fans ahead of matches can work.
If it is a tight timeline for Wembley, it is even tighter for other host cities despite assurances to UEFA than some percentage of fans will be permitted in just over two months' time.
If England was told now it had the whole tournament, as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has advocated, then they could quickly organize for other big stadiums in London — or Old Trafford in Manchester and Liverpool's Anfield etc — to be mobilized.
UEFA's executive committee meeting on April 19 may come too late. If they do decide to go down this route, they might try a halfway house and have a British Isles tournament given Glasgow and Dublin are due to be hosts too.
But Dublin looks to be one of the original venues most at risk of missing out anyway because of the pandemic and a lack of fan guarantees.
Officials say 12,000 fans at least can be at Hampden Park in Glasgow, but given the devolved Scottish government is in charge of health issues not the British, any deal between the Scots and English could get too messy.
No traveling fans
Of course, there is one issue surely everyone can now agree on. Wherever the tournament is held, only fans from the relevant host country should be allowed
at games and supporters should not be allowed to travel across borders.
For 23 squad members of a team and the entourage, travel to one place is doable with testing etc. But even teams flying from Baku to Rome and then on to Amsterdam is madness, nevermind fans.
Another issue is that English spectators would turn up to see Austria vs. North Macedonia after so long without live football, fans in some other European countries maybe would not given the constraints.
For full disclosure, I am English but that is not why I am advocating England hosts the whole thing. In 2019, I even argued that Michel Platini's wacky idea to hold the tournament across the continent made sense.
But that was before a global pandemic.