Although not yet formally announced, at it’s meeting in Nyon, Switzerland, on Tuesday, UEFA is understood to have said that it would postpone the European Championship until the summer of 2021. The decision, according to the Norwegian FA, was unanimous, and supported also by the players and the clubs.
The Norwegian FA says it was decided that the tournament will now take place from 11 June to 11 July next year.
The 2020 competition was the first in the tournament’s history to propose the use of twelve venues, one of which was scheduled to be Bilbao.
UEFA has also proposed a videoconference with representatives of the 55 member federations, the European club association, the mainland leagues and the players’ unions to decide what happens to competitions organised under their authority: the Champions League, Europa League, both brought to a halt by the coronavirus pandemic, and the Euro 2020, which should get underway on June 12 in Rome, but everything pointed to it being postponed.
The Italian Football Federation expressly asked for the postponement of Euro 2020 yesterday, according to Gabriele Gravina. “We proposed to UEFA that they postpone it.” Austria, through its Government, also supported the measure.
Many representatives, including Spain’s Javier Tebas, insisted on Sunday that the tournament should be postponed in order to avoid an economic disaster.
World sport has been brought to a standstill by the spread of the new disease. With the national leagues suspended, most countries advocate ending these competitions and continental club tournaments, thereby avoiding an economic drain.
The president of the La Liga has already announced that he expects the season to end: “I am convinced that we are going to end the League,” he said on Sunday although we have not ruled out that it could be completed behind closed doors.
But for this to happen, however, there must first be a decrease in the number of infections and the recovery of some sort of normality in Spain, a scenario that still seems a long way distant although the postponement of Euro 2020 provides a chance for European leagues that have been suspended to now be completed.
