The 2020 European Championship will be the first to be played all across the continent, with 12 different countries hosting matches, forcin...
The 2020 European Championship will be the first to be played all across the continent, with 12 different countries hosting matches, forcing teams and supporters to rack up thousands of air miles and leave behind a gigantic carbon footprint.
Sold by Uefa as a one-off to celebrate 60 years since the first European Championship, the format of Euro 2020 may be innovative, and organisers have promised to make the tournament environmentally friendly.
That promise seems to ring hollow, however, when, for example, Polish supporters will have to travel over 6,000 kilometres in 10 days to watch their team’s group games, to Dublin and Bilbao and then back to Ireland again.
Matches will also be played by the Caspian Sea in Baku, nearly 5,000 kilometres from London, where the final will be held.
Contrast that with Euro 2016, when the tournament was held in France, and the next Euro in Germany in 2024. Both of those countries are compact enough to travel around easily by train.
“This is a total nonsense from an environmental viewpoint,” Karima Delli, a French Green who chairs the European Parliament’s Transport and Tourism Committee, told AFP. “They say this new format is about showcasing European unity, but they’re forgetting that there is a climate emergency.”
However, Uefa insists...
