Damascus-SANA
After European football faced a disaster at the economic level due to the suspension of tournaments due to the outbreak of the Corona virus in the European continent, sports life finally began to return to normal, which was the announcement of the start of the European Nations Cup “Euro 2020” tomorrow after being postponed for a whole year.
The start of the European Nations Cup tomorrow, from the Olympic Stadium in the Italian capital, Rome, is an embodiment of the start of global football’s recovery from the repercussions of the “Covid 19” pandemic, especially as it is considered one of the most important tournaments at the European and global level because it includes the strongest teams. Financial prizes in light of the financial crisis caused by the virus, especially that the Continental Confederation decided to distribute 371 million euros to the 24 participating teams, so that each team would receive “9.25” million euros for just participating, while the tournament prizes amounted to 34 million euros.
The sixteenth edition of Euro 2020 is exceptional by all standards, after the European Football Association decided to hold it in eleven cities distributed in the old continent, on the occasion of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the start of the tournament, in which 24 teams will participate, divided into six groups, the first of which included Turkey, Italy and Wales Switzerland, the second teams Denmark, Finland, Belgium and Russia, the third the Netherlands, Ukraine, Austria, North Macedonia, the fourth England, Croatia, Scotland and the Czech Republic, while the fifth group included Spain, Sweden, Poland and Slovakia, and the sixth group, which was described as fiery, will include Hungary and Portugal, the holders of the last championship, France the world champion and the ancient German team.
As for the qualification system for the advanced rounds of the tournament, it will not be different from what it was in the European Nations Championship that was held in France in 2016, where each team will play three matches in the group stage to qualify for the first and second place from each group, in addition to the four best third-placed teams to the round of six ten.
The tournament will witness many modifications, as five substitutions will be adopted instead of three for each team in the match, with the teams allowed to call up 26 players, with 23 players recorded on the match record and three sitting on the stands in a precedent within the European Championship.
The new tournament law did not differ from its predecessors in terms of penalties, as expelled players or coaches will be suspended in the next match of the tournament, with the possibility of increasing the penalty to include more matches and even other competitions in the event that the error is serious. In terms of warnings, the player or coach who will receive two warnings will be suspended. For the next match, the warnings will be removed from the quarter-finals to avoid the player's absence from the final.
And the new European Nations Cup was not limited to substitutions, as the federation added a new amendment to the tournament system related to the protocols of the Corona pandemic, which states that “in the event that a team is placed in partial or complete quarantine, it is allowed to play its scheduled match if it has at least 13 players, including the goalkeeper. In the event that this is not possible, the Confederation can reprogram the match within 48 hours, even if it is in a different stadium, and when it is impossible to hold the match, the team responsible for canceling the match is considered legally forfeited by 3-0.
The video assistant referee (VIR) technology will be present in the tournament for the first time in the European Cup after resorting to goal-line technology at Euro France in 2016, in an effort by the European Union to help referees and avoid mistakes during matches.
The protocols followed to protect against Corona did not miss the rules of the finals of the tournament with regard to the mass attendance, as the European Union allowed the eleven hosting cities to determine the attendance rates as a prerequisite for hosting the tournament, which was the highest in the Hungarian capital Budapest by one hundred percent with strict restrictions followed by Amsterdam and Bucharest Copenhagen and Glasgow by 25 to 33 percent, and finally Rome and London by 25 percent, while Munich set the number of attendance for each match it hosts at 14,500 fans.
It is noteworthy that the German and Spanish teams share the lead of the winning teams, as they have each held the title three times.
Fahmy El Shaarawy
