Martin Kallen, UEFA’s tournament director for Euro 2016, has told Germany’s “Sport Bild” weekly that individual matches could be called off if there were terror attacks or threats and staged the next day behind closed doors.
Responsible for staging the tournament which which kicks off in France on June 10, Kallen said the option of playing games behind closed doors would occur if a match had to be moved to another venue for safety reasons. He explained that the organisers would have little option but to rearrange the match “because the spectators who have tickets for the match in question wouldn’t have enough time to organize travel and a hotel room.”
Kallen also insisted that “safety and staging the tournament takes priority over everything else” and confirmed that the organizers had been working with the French authorities in a bid to cover every possible scenario.
Jacques Lambert, the head of the local organizing committee for Euro 2016 insisted that “the stadiums, the team hotels, the training pitches and the hotels used by the delegations will be safe, even if nobody can guarantee 100-percent security.”
France has been the victim of a number of terrorist attacks in the last two years, including the murderous attack on the editorial offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and at a Kosher supermarket in Paris in January, 2015. The worst attack came on November 13, when three suicide bombers blew themselves up outside of the Stade de France just outside of Paris, while the French national team was playing Germany in a friendly match. This was just one of several deadly attacks in Paris that night, which claimed the lives of 130 people and injured more than 300 others.
The opening match between France and Romania will be staged at Stade de France on June 10 and the final will be plyed at the same venue on July 10.
