Chasing a trophy across Europe during Covid times

Euro 2020 will have fans in the stands instead of the usual canned noise of closed-door games

KOLKATA: It begins in Rome and ends in London with stops in nine other countries. Twenty-four teams chasing a trophy over 51 games through cities as disparate as St Petersburg and Seville; Baku and Budapest. No counter-intelligence fiction this but wanderlust meeting football to celebrate the European championship turning 60. Or, 61 as it turns out.

When Michel Platini floated the plan in 2012, he had 12 or 13 cities in mind. His fall from grace was still a few years away and as UEFA president, Platini had listed the positive of spreading the competition across Europe: little would need to be spent on building or refurbishing stadia.

At a time when many venues hosting World Cup, European championship and Olympics had become white elephants, the idea found takers. The small detail of only Turkey making serious bid to host the 2020 edition too must have influenced the plan.

“It is perhaps a bit of a zany idea but it is a good idea,” the former France captain and a midfield artist had said in December 2012.

So, in 2014, UEFA listed 13 cities for this project. It wasn’t easy then and it isn’t easy now when a novel coronavirus changed the world forcing UEFA to defer the competition to 2021.

In 2017, two years after corruption charges impaled Platini, Brussels exited as host because their 62,613-seater Eurostadium—one of the few being built—wouldn’t be ready. Four games slotted to Brussels came to Wembley, the irony of shifting from the headquarters of the European Union to a country that had by then voted to exit it being lost on nobody.

Wembley will host England’s group games, the semifinals and the final and a Round-of-16 tie that could have England playing Germany. That game was supposed to be in Dublin but the city couldn’t promise it would allow spectators because of Covid-19 and so was delisted by UEFA. Ditto Bilbao with Seville being a late substitute.