"Uefa has reminded participating teams that partnerships are integral to the delivery of the tournament and to ensuring the development of football across Europe, including for youth and women," The way UEFA try and play the card the equality card
"partnerships are integral to the delivery of the tournament and to ensuring the development of football across Europe" = "They give us loads of money so we need to advertise"
Let's never forget that this is an organisation that fined Nicklas Bendtner more money for showing off PaddyPower underwear than it did a club who's fans were chanting racist abuse during a Europa League game.
I see they’re at it again, threatening to move the final unless 2,500 of their gimps are allowed in without quarantine etc.. Johnson won’t want to let Orban get one over on him so we’ll see if he bends over or not.
I'm looking forward to the knockout competitions. This new format with only 8 teams being knocked out in the group stages has reduced the excitement/drama that comes from the group games. What would have been an exciting winner takes all game between Portugal/France on Wednesday has been slightly reduced to a draw will suit both teams. Likewise for Ukraine/Austria tomorrow. There are still some tense games of course such as Croatia v Scotland/Denmark v Russia.
If, as expected, Johnson allows these 2,500 VIPs into the country for the final he can kiss goodbye to any further public compliance with his Covid restrictions.
I just find it absurd that a bunch of football (or any other sport) ‘administrators’ can demand exemption from the law because it’s inconvenient to them and their hangers on. I’d tell them where to stick it personally.
Which is why it shouldn’t happen if he wants to keep the support from the public? Be the same for Wimbledon, golf and F1 that are all coming up .
Why is the draw always pre planned, why not just go to a draw after the group stages - group winners seeded so cant play each other and you cant play team from your group - stop all this talk of which route is best. Might be harder to sort having 3rd placed teams but would work fine for the World Cup and would be an exciting element having a draw to look forward to.
Bad news for Wales fans. They won’t be allowed to travel to Amsterdam for the 2nd round. Euro 2020: Wales fans 'won't be allowed in' to Netherlands
Johnson and his government have created this situation for themselves by having such a reduced capacity for our games, even though we're well ahead of many other hosts countries when it comes to the actual covid situation in the country. Making an exception for the final would seem less controversial if they had rightfully allowed 40-60k in Wembley for games. Instead they've kept capacity to the same as the FA Cup final despite us being weeks, and millions of vaccinations ahead of when that took place. This government and their 'advisers' have proven time and time again they just make it up as they go along.
True about the vaccine progress but we seem to be getting increased numbers again unfortunately. Maybe because we didn’t close the boarders quick enough to prevent transmission from people going to and coming from certain parts of the world . I don’t know what the situation is like in Italy , Netherlands , Denmark etc for example .
Capacity at Wembley will be 45K for the knockouts. Wimbledon: Capacity crowds for men's and women's finals - BBC Sport
Fair but the group game capacities (and for the play off finals) are still a load of absolute nonsense.
The results today will be good news for any teams that win and are 3rd like Spain , Poland , Scotland and Croatia as 4 points will be enough to get through now .
Spain is a bit more complicated though as if they win the go 1st or 2nd, and they can't rely on a draw being enough, even though it's now enough *if* they finish 3rd, if Poland beat Sweden they would actually finish bottom on 3pts not 3rd. So they still have to go for the win and aim to get 1st or 2nd really.
