UEFA drew a positive conclusion from the European Championship. “We are very, very satisfied with how the tournament went. We had so many fans here in Germany from all over Europe who came here peacefully and celebrated and cheered on their team,” said UEFA competitions chief Martin Kallen. “The organisation was very, very good. The games were good. There were few surprises,” added the Swiss at a reception in Munich to honour the volunteers.
Kallen found the streakers during the tournament “very annoying”. There was some commercialism involved, and there were people who paid for it, said the UEFA man. “That was one part of the streakers. The other part was the Ronaldo mania, where Ronaldo as a superstar simply electrified people so much that they absolutely wanted to take a selfie with him.”
The incidents were not ideal. “You should be able to play through a football match. But we lived with it and kept adapting so that we had less and less,” he said.
Problems with the train
In addition to the speedsters, there were also repeated problems with transport and Deutsche Bahn. It has been known for a long time that Deutsche Bahn has problems, said Kallen. “But what we also saw was that there were a lot of trains. The range is very high.” He traveled by train every day and made sure that he arrived at least three hours early. The buffer was enough. “I then adapted a little. Sometimes it is a little difficult, but the range is actually large and varied.”
The railway was criticized several times during the tournament. For the semi-finals, for example, the Dutch team had to travel from Wolfsburg to Dortmund by plane instead of by train due to a last-minute train cancellation.
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