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UEFA chief Ceferin criticizes organizational format of 2020 Euro Cup

10 July 2021 00:13 (UTC +04:00)

The format of the 2020 UEFA Euro Cup tournament this year turned out to be unfair to some national teams as they were forced to travel larger distances compared to others, the BBC cited UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin as saying on Friday, APA reports.

The UEFA chief said the format of the tournament was "too challenging" and he "would not support it anymore."

"In a way, it is not correct that some teams have to travel more than 10,000 kilometers while others have to only travel 1,000 kilometers," the BBC quoted Ceferin as saying. "It is not fair to fans, who had to be in Rome one day and in Baku over the next few, which is a four and a half hour flight."

"We had to travel a lot, into countries with different jurisdictions, different currencies, countries in the European Union (EU) and Non-EU, so it was not easy," the UEFA chief continued. "It was a format that was decided before I came [into post] and I respect it."

"It is an interesting idea but it is hard to implement and I don't think we will do it again," Ceferin added.

A decision to hold the 2020 Euro Cup, which celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2020, in various European states instead of in one or two hosting countries was made at the UEFA Executive Committee’s meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, on December 6, 2012. It was the initiative of UEFA’s then-President Michel Platini, who proposed a concept of the 2020 tournament "EURO for Europe."