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Fans of the DFB team at the EM 2021 in Munich
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Federico Gambarini / dpa
According to a report by ARD “Sportschau”, there will be no standing room in the stadiums of the 2024 European Football Championship in Germany.
"Since the results will only be available in the summer of 2023 and thus only one year before Uefa Euro 2024 and the resulting measures will be proposed, the period is too short to integrate them into the ticket concept for the tournament," said German football -Bund (DFB) at the request of the »Sportschau«.
Before the start of the current season, the European football union Uefa lifted the general ban on standing room in the three European cup competitions that had been in force since 1998.
They are tested in Germany, France and England.
The Uefa executive should decide whether to continue or expand the game after the end of the season.
The fan organization Football Supporters Europe (FSE) regrets the decision to forego standing room at the European Championship.
"This is a missed opportunity to start a new generation of football tournaments," said FSE's Ronan Evain of the "Sportschau".
It is disappointing »that no other solution was found.
Precisely because Germany has the most experience with standing room.«
Prohibition also dates back to the Hillsborough disaster
Of the ten German stadiums planned for the European Championship, only the Berlin Olympic Stadium has no standing room.
In Munich, Dortmund, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Gelsenkirchen, Frankfurt, Cologne, Leipzig and Düsseldorf, fans in league operations can also watch the games while standing.
The last time there was standing room in Germany was at the 1988 European Championships.
At the time, Uefa's ban on standing room for European Cup and international matches was a reaction to safety concerns triggered, among other things, by the Hillsborough disaster in Sheffield, England, in 1989, which killed 97 people.
The government of the Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at the time made all venues in the first and second divisions of England seat-only stadiums, and Uefa followed suit at international games.
It has now been proven that mistakes by the police in dealing with crowds, rather than standing room, led to the disaster at Hillsborough Stadium (read more here).
ngo/dpa