There won’t be a full confirmation until April but a leading UEFA figure has spoken of his optimism that Euro 2020 will go ahead as planned in June and that we could yet see fans at stadia.

Whether those fans will be able to travel across borders remains uncertain but the interview with UEFA’s Medical Adviser Daniel Koch hinted that different numbers of crowds and access might be possible.

Close to home, we have seen that the UK is planning for full stadia by the middle of June but that in Ireland we are talking about maximums of 500. That said there is a line in the new Government Living with Covid plan which allows that “For large purpose-built event facilities (e.g. stadia, auditoriums, conferencing/event centres), specific guidance will be developed with the relevant sectors to take account of size and different conditions for events such as large national and international sporting events.

Of course, we need numbers to fall in transmission and rise in vaccination before it would be politically in any way possible to suggest inbound travel and tens of thousands of fans at the Aviva for games that don’t involve the Republic of Ireland or even Northern Ireland.

But maybe we will still be able to host even if that doesn’t happen.

“I think there will be a lot of flexibility at least up until the end of April, a decision must be made at the beginning of April but then there is a lot of flexibility to say, now we can scale-up because the situation improved much more than expected,” said Koch.

The FAI, Stadium, City Council and other stakeholders in the Dublin hosting are in dialogue with UEFA and a decision on the tournament can best progress will be made in April.

The ability to return tickets was made available to all the fans who had bought them earlier this month suggesting that whatever fan numbers are possible will be limited but second-guessing the virus and the politics has proven to be a fool’s game in the year that has passed.

“It is very, very difficult to forecast. It is not only forecasting the epidemic, it is forecasting the politics. We work hard in an optimistic good way, but how much will be possible? We don’t know yet,” added Koch, a former head of communicable diseases at Switzerland’s Federal Office of Public Health.

“At the moment the challenge is to keep up positive thinking and planning for the best and not to fall into the pitfall to only think of worst-case scenarios.”

The four games scheduled for Dublin take place on the 14th, 18th, 23rd and 29th of June.

Sport for Business Partners