The Euros are just a few days away and the excitement among fans across the globe is very high. The last major tournament featuring European teams was three years ago, which makes this one even special.
The beauty of this tournament is that it is being played in as many as 12 different cities, which means that home advantage will be at play.
Group wise venues:
Group A – Rome and Baku
Group B – St Petersburg and Copenhagen
Group C – Amsterdam and Bucharest
Group D – London and Glasgow
Group E – Bilbao and Dublin
Group F – Munich and Budapest
Round of 16 venues:
Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Bucharest, London, Glasgow, Bilbao, Dublin and Budapest will host 1 round of 16 match each.
Quarter final venues:
Rome, Baku, St Petersburg and Munich will host the four quarter final matches.
Semi-finals and final venues:
London will host the final 3 games of the tournament.
The tournament is set to have a different vibe to any sort of footballing action in the last 12 months as fans have been granted access to the stadiums. Fans have a big impact in football and teams will look to get some much-needed motivation from the 12th man after a hard and long season.
England will be the team which benefits the most from the schedule. If they top their group, they will keep playing all their matches at Wembley until they lose a match. Given that they will be backed by their fans till the final whistle, this is a big advantage for the Three Lions.
Moreover, they will be avoiding any sort of travelling during the competition which will offer extra rest to the players. Other major teams who will be ecstatic by home advantage are Germany, Spain, Italy and Netherlands as they will also play all their group matches at home.
Despite France not being at home during any of their matches, they are still considered favourites to go all the way. Portugal and Belgium are two more teams who are capable of reaching at the least semi-finals, they both won’t be having any home games either.