The 2020 UEFA European Football Championship is scheduled to be the 16th UEFA European Championship. The tournament was originally scheduled to take place from 12 June to 12 July 2020. On 17 March 2020, UEFA announced that the tournament would be postponed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. The competition was postponed in order to reduce pressure on the public services in affected countries and to allow time for the completion of domestic leagues that had been suspended.
About UEFA Euro 2020 in brief
The 2020 UEFA European Football Championship is scheduled to be the 16th UEFA European Championship. The tournament was originally scheduled to take place from 12 June to 12 July 2020. On 17 March 2020, UEFA announced that the tournament would be postponed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. The competition was postponed in order to reduce pressure on the public services in affected countries and to allow time for the completion of domestic leagues that had been suspended. The Stadio Olimpico in Rome was chosen to host the opening game, involving Turkey and hosts Italy. Wembley Stadium in London will host the semi-finals and final for the second time, having done so before at the 1996 tournament in the stadium’s former incarnation. Portugal are the defending champions, having won the 2016 competition. For the first time, the video assistant referee system will be used at the UEFA European Championships. The final list of bids was published by UEFA on 26 April 2014, with a decision on the hosts being made by the UEFA Executive Committee on 19 September 2014. There were two bids for the Finals Package and 19 bids for a Standard Package ; Brussels, marked with red, were initially selected but removed from the list of venues by UEFA by December 2017 and the planned games there were moved to London. The selection of the host cities did not guarantee an automatic qualifying berth to the national team of that country. UEFA reasoned that the pan-European staging of the tournament was the logical decision at a time of financial difficulty across Europe.
Critics have cited the expanded format and its associated additional costs as the decisive factor for only one nation having put forward a serious bid. UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin said the organisation was confident that the situation could be dealt with, while general secretary Theodore Theodoridis stated that UEFA was maintaining contact with the World Health Organization and national governments regarding the coronavirus. The postponement allowed for pressure to be reduced on public services, while also providing space in the calendar for domestic European leagues that were suspended to complete their seasons. In May 2020, UEFA confirmed that Euro 2020 would still be known as UEFA Euro 2020. However, UEFA did not rule out the possibility of reducing the number of hosts as a result of the expanded FIFA Club World Cup, which was due to be held in June 2021, will be rescheduled to July 2021, which will be called UEFA Euro 2022. The tournament will still retain the name ‘UEFA Euro 2020’. It will take place in 12 cities in 12 UEFA countries, and will be held to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the European Championship competition. UEFA President Michel Platini suggested at a press conference on 30 June 2012, a day before the UEFA Euro 2012 Final, that instead of having one host country, the tournament could be spread over ‘12 or 13 cities’ across the continent. At the time, UEFA already used a similar system for the UEFAEuropean Under-17 Championship’s Elite Round, where each of the seven groups is hosted by a different country.
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This page is based on the article UEFA Euro 2020 published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 19, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
