ST. PETERSBURG, February 4. /TASS/. The football stadium is Russia’s second largest city of St. Petersburg is fully prepared to host matches of the 2020 UEFA Euro Cup this summer, Andreas Schar, who is UEFA’s chief of venue operations, said on Tuesday.
Andreas Schar is currently paying an inspection with a delegation of UEFA experts to asses preparations of St. Petersburg for hosting matches of the major European football championship.
Speaking to journalists on Tuesday, Schar said he believed that the stadium was completely ready for the championship and only a minor tuning work remained. But on the whole, he continued, the stadium is in the green zone of readiness, according to UEFA’s scale.
The Final Draw for the 2020 UEFA Euro Cup was held on November 30, 2019 in the Romanian capital of Bucharest. Twenty-four national football teams, which have cleared the qualifications round, were divided into six groups with four teams in each. Russia was placed in Group B, and will play against Belgium (in St. Petersburg on June 13), Finland (in St. Petersburg on June 17) and Denmark (in Copenhagen on June 22).
The matches of the 2020 Euro Cup will be held at stadiums in 12 different cities across Europe, namely in London (England), Munich (Germany), Rome (Italy), Baku (Azerbaijan), Saint Petersburg (Russia), Bucharest (Romania), Amsterdam (The Netherlands), Dublin (Ireland), Bilbao (Spain), Budapest (Hungary), Glasgow (Scotland) and Copenhagen (Denmark) between June 12 and July 12, 2020.
Russia’s second largest city of St. Petersburg was granted the right to host three group stage matches and one of the quarterfinals of the 2020 UEFA Euro Cup. The newly-built football arena in St. Petersburg hosted the opening and final matches of the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup and also served as one of 12 stadiums across the country hosting matches of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
The over 62,300-seat capacity stadium was laid down in the western part of Krestovsky Island in St. Petersburg in 2007 and commissioned in early 2017. It serves as a home stadium for Zenit St. Petersburg football club.
St. Petersburg will also offer two Fan Zones during the major European football championship and the main zone will be located on Konyushennaya Square while the other one, much smaller, on Palace Square.
Alexei Sorokin, the head of the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) Russia-2020, told TASS in December it was highly important for the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) that a Fan-Zone would be opened on Palace Square in St. Petersburg for the 2020 UEFA Euro Cup. The Fan-Zone on Palace Square will be operational only for a limited period of time during the European football championship and, according to plans, it will serve as a platform for broadcasting of play-off matches between July 3 and 12.
A decision to hold the 2020 Euro Cup, which is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, in various European countries instead of in one or two hosting countries was made at the UEFA Executive Committee’s meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, on December 6, 2012.