Next year’s European football championship will maintain the official name of the 2020 UEFA Euro Cup, although the tournament has been postponed for one year due to the ongoing global spread of COVID-19, the UEFA press service announced in a statement on Friday, APA reports citing TASS.
The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) decided on March 17 to postpone the 2020 UEFA Euro Cup for exactly one year as a preventive measure against the ongoing global spread of the novel coronavirus and now the championship is scheduled to be held between June 11 and July 11, 2021.
"We trust that all of our venues will remain the same, ensuring the tournament remains true to its original vision: staging a truly Europe-wide event that befits the EURO's 60th birthday," the statement from UEFA reads. "The tournament will still be known as UEFA EURO 2020."
"We believe moving EURO 2020 is the best solution for European football," the statement continued. "We hope it will help all international and domestic competitions that are currently on hold to be completed."
The European football body also recommended on March 17 to suspend matches of all European football tournaments.
"It is too early to say when football will be played again," the UEFA press service stated. "As we have done since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, UEFA will continue to liaise with the World Health Organization (WHO) and national authorities to guide European football's response to a constantly changing crisis."
The matches of the 2020 Euro Cup were initially scheduled to be held at stadiums in 12 different cities across Europe, namely in London (England), Munich (Germany), Rome (Italy), Baku (Azerbaijan), Saint Petersburg (Russia), Bucharest (Romania), Amsterdam (The Netherlands), Dublin (Ireland), Bilbao (Spain), Budapest (Hungary), Glasgow (Scotland) and Copenhagen (Denmark) between June 12 and July 12, 2020.
A decision to hold the 2020 Euro Cup, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, in various European countries instead of in one or two hosting countries was made at the UEFA Executive Committee’s meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, on December 6, 2012.
COVID-19 Global Spread
On December 31, 2019, the Chinese authorities reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) about an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown etiology in Wuhan, an economic and industrial megalopolis with a population of 11 million.
The virus was identified on January 7 as 2019-nCoV. The World Health Organization declared in January that the new coronavirus outbreak was a public health emergency of international concern, characterizing it as an epidemic with multiple locations.
On February 11, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated that the organization gave the novel coronavirus an official name of COVID-19. On March 11, the World Health Organization officially stated that the continuously spreading novel coronavirus was a global pandemic.
As of today, 183 countries and territories reported confirmed coronavirus cases. According to the latest reports, over 259,000 cases of patients infected with the novel coronavirus have been confirmed worldwide. The virus’ death toll has reached 10,545, yet more than 89,920 patients have recovered from the disease.
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