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25/11/01
The seeds have been announced for the EURO 2004 qualifying phase, which will begin on 7/8 September 2002 and end on 11/12 October 2003 (Play-off dates are 15/16 November and 18/19 November, 2003). The seeds are:
France, Sweden, Spain, Czech Republic, Germany, Rep. Ireland, Romania, Italy, Belgium, Turkey. There will be ten groups, the winners of which will qualify automatically for Portugal 2004. The second-placed teams
will have to win a play-off to qualify. The 15 countries thus qualified will join the hosts Portugal in the finals. The draw for the qualifying phase will take place on January 25th. (infordesporto)
01/11/01
Both Benfica and Sporting will receive financial help from Lisbon City Council, in the order of £7.5m, to go towards the building of their new stadiums, to be used in EURO 2004. (A Bola)
12/10/01
The draw for the qualifying stage of EURO 2004 will take place in the Europarque complex in Santa Maria da Feira, in the North of Portugal, on January 25th, 2002
at 11.00 local time. The 50 countries involved will be drawn into ten groups of five and will play out the qualifying group games between September 7th 2002 and September 12th 2003. The play-offs will be in November, 2003. there will be five seeds, based on performance at EURO 2004 and the qualifying stage of the 2002 World Cup. France is already a seed. Portugal will qualify for the competition as hosts and they will be joined by 15 other teams: the winners of each of the ten groups plus the five winners of the play-offs between the second-placed team in each group.
The dates of the qualifying games are the following:
2002
07 and 08 September
12 and 13 October
15 and 16 October
2003
29 and 30 March
01 and 02 April
07 and 08 June
10 and 11 June
06 and 07 September
09 and 10 September
11 and 12 September
The play-offs will be on November 15 and 16, 2003 (first leg) and November 19 and 20 (second leg)
EURO 2004 will take place between June 12th and July 4th, 2004.
(infordesporto)
05/08/01
A meeting of Benfica directors to discuss the increasingly urgent question of the new Estádio da Luz was postponed Tuesday for lack of a quorum. Mário Dias, vice-president for
Benfica's patrimony, was quoted in A Bola as saying that the the date for the EGM, in which Benfica supporters will vote for or against the new stadium, must be set this week or time will run out for the stadium to be included in the group of stadiums to be used at EURO 2004. "If we don't say, publicly and urgently, that we will be in the EURO and that we can satisfy all the conditions to go ahead with the construction of the new stadium, then it will be UEFA itself that removes Benfica, irreversibly," he said. Meanwhile, president of the Financial Department at the club,
João Carvalho, said Tuesday that his department had not yet received any documentation about the new stadium from the board of directors, a worrying situation given the urgency of the case. (A Bola/ maisfutebol ) (video - infordesporto)
02/08/01
The UEFA Stadium Commission visited Leiria's municipal stadium Wednesday and Ernie Walker
declared "This is one of the nicest projects of the ten Portuguese stadiums for EURO 2004. The renovated stadium is expected to be ready in July 2003 and the estimated cost is £21m. (A Bola On-line)
01/08/01
Ernie Walker and the UEFA Stadium Commission are in Portugal again to check up on the progress being made with the stadiums designated for use at EURO 2004. They visited the
Municipal Stadium of Faro/ Loulé
in the Algarve Tuesday. Walker said: "Portugal has already proved, with the World Exposition of 1998 that it organised, that it is capable of great undertakings." The Commission visits Lisbon
(Benfica, Sporting), Leiria, Aveiro (Beira-Mar) and Oporto (FC Porto, Boavista) Wednesday. (A Bola On-line)
20/06/01
President of the Portuguese Football Federation Gilberto Madaíl reacted angrily Tuesday to comments made Monday by the Governor of the Bank of Portugal, who suggested that hard-up Portugal would have to
think again about several major national projects, among them the staging of the EURO 2004 Championship. The FPF President said: "This is an investment - it's not expenditure." (infordesporto)
30/05/01
Benfica presented Monday a project for a hypothetical new Luz stadium to the UEFA authorities
in Nyon, Switzerland. The move seems to negate the possibility of a municipal stadium, to be shared with Sporting, which has been doing the rounds of the press in recent weeks and is still being advocated by the Lisbon City Council. Before the old Luz is brought down and a new one built, the sócios of Benfica would need to be consulted in a General Meeting, according to a promise made by president Manuel Vilarinho.
09/05/01
Benfica have decided that the best course of action in terms of the Luz Stadium would be to tear it down and build a new one nearby. The old Luz costs over £1m a year to maintain and would not be accepted as a venue for Euro 2004 as it is. The other option, of renovating it, has also been rejected as inviable because of the maintenance costs, which will be similar to now, and the fact that the stadium could still not be used for anything other than football. It would also cost over £30m, whereas a new stadium will cost double that, with the government footing a quarter of the bill. There have also been reports that Lisbon City Council may get involved in the project, making the new stadium semi-municipal. The new stadium (pic), to keep the name of the Luz, will seat 75,000 and will take 2 years to build. No final decision will be made, however,
unitl the sócios (club members) have been consulted in an EGM. A survey on website infordesporto had 66% of visitors in favour of a new stadium. (maisfutebol)
Tuesday also saw work begin on FC Porto 's new 50,000 stadium (pic), to coincide
with a visit from Ernie Walker and the UEFA people for their latest inspection of the EURO 2004 venues. While they were in the north, the inspectors also visited Boavista's Bessa stadium, which has
one-and-a-half stands already built. "This project is the only one that you can look at and believe in," said Ernie Walker. (maisfutebol)
03/04/01
Sports Minister José Lello has extended the deadline for Benfica to submit the project for a new or modified Luz stadium with a view to it being included in the group of stadiums to be used for
EURO 2004. The original deadline was March 31st, now extended to April 23rd. "What is important above all is that Benfica resolve this question in peace ... because it's important that the Luz is part of the event," said the minister. (infordesporto)
31/03/01
The project for FC Porto 's new stadium (picture) was presented to the public Friday. It is to be built a stone's throw away from the
existing Estádio das Antas on land which at present has the club's training grounds. A feature of the multifunctional stadium is that it will be possible to fill its 50,214 places in 20 minutes and to clear them in six. It will cost in the region of £75m, a quarter of which will be paid by the state. ( A Bola/ O Jogo)
13/02/01
The UEFA Stadium Commission , headed by Ernie Walker, is in Portugal to check up on progess being made on the construction of stdiums for 2004. The president of the Municipal Council of the town of Aveiro
in the north (home of Primeira club Beira-Mar) met with the Commission and afterwards told the press that the local stadium, which was originally budgeted at about £18m will now cost up to £27m. Excavations on
the site of the stadium are to begin in May, construction in August. Completion is scheduled for August 2003. Meanwhile, work on the Estádio Inter-Municipal of Faro/Loulé
(which will be the home of Farense and Louletano after the competition) will begin three months ahead of schedule, in June. (maisfutebol)
04/02/01
The first stone was laid today for Sporting 's new Alvalade stadium. It will hold over 50,000 spectators and will cost between £50m and £60m, a quarter of which will be paid by the state. Sporting's president,
Dias da Cunha, called it "a pioneering project." It was blessed by a catholic priest.
02/02/01
President of the Portuguese Football Federation, Gilberto Madaíl, has once again reassured the Portuguese public that work on the stadiums to be used for EURO 2004 is in hand. At the Symposium
organized by A Bola, he said that work on all the ten stadiums involved will be under way by the summer. (See Quotes) (A Bola)
18/01/01
Sports Minister José Lello has visited the site of Sporting's new Alvalade Stadium, work on which has just begun: "It was important that I came here so that everyone could see that work on EURO 2004 was under
way ... It will be a magnificent and emblematic stadium and a way for us to demonstrate the rigour with which EURO 2004 will be run." To the suggestion that the Estádio da Luz wll not be used for the event, the Minister responded: "Deadlines are being respected - the plan for the Luz has until March 31st to be presented ... The final will definitely be in Lisbon, and nothing stops me from thinking that the Luz will be a venue at EURO 2004."
11/01/01
Work on Sporting's new stadium will now begin on Monday January 15th after Lisbon City Council gave the official go-ahead. The first jobs will be to fence off the area, next to the existing Alvalade Stadium, and
begin excavations. ( Maisfutebol)
10/01/01
Sports Minister José Lello met for the first time with the organizing body of EURO 2004: "EURO 2004 will serve to present 'Portugal' as a brand, a country that does things well and with rigour ... I'm very
optimistic about the future ... We need to be less obsessed about the construction of the stadiums and concentrate more on a plan of action in strictly organizational and legislative areas, safety, staffing, tickets
and other areas equally vital to the success of the event," he said. FPF president, Gilberto Madaíl, added that "this year is going to be decisive in terms of the solidarity between the organizing body and
the Government." He also outlined some of the strategies planned for publicizing the event, explaining that as from 2002, Portuguese airports will have information desks and that Europe, especially Spain, and
later Latin America and the West Coast of the USA will be targeted. (Jornal de Notícias)
07/01/01
Work on Sporting's new stadium will not now begin tomorrow as previously planned. The contractors are waiting for a municipal license from the Lisbon City Council. (A Bola)
30/12/00
FPF president Gilberto Madaíl met today with Benfica president Manuel Vilarinho to discuss progress on preparations for EURO 2004. After the meeting, he said that the Luz stadium will probably be the venue for the
final of the competition, but did not say categorically that it will: "This is a dynamic and not a static process," he said. (Infordesporto)
28/12/00
The city of Coimbra has been given the green light by the government to go ahead with improvements to its Estádio Municipal, to be used at Euro 2004. The work will go out for tender some time during the first quarter
of 2001 and is due to be completed in June 2003. The stadium will be the only one at the championship which is not fully covered. Sports Minister José Lello took advantage of the presentation of the project to
reassure doubters about the smooth running of preparations: "Euro 2004 will be marked by rigour, transparency, efficiency, exigency and excellence." (Jornal de Notícias)
20/12/00
The Secretary General of the Belgian Football Federation, Alain Courtois, had been in Lisbon attending in a consultative capacity meetings directed towards discussion of the organization of EURO 2004. Asked if he
thought the fact that Portugal has had four Sports Ministers in the last year would prejudice preparations for the the tournament, he said: "We had six different Ministers of the Interior, responsible for
security ... you have to understand that it's not men that make or break thes projects, it's the institutions involved."
18/12/00
Portugal has a new Sports Minister as from today. The previous one, Armando Vara, was forced to resign after he was implicated in a public funds scandal. The new minister is José Lello, the fourth in little over a
year. He was quick to praise the efforts of his predecessor and to dispell fears over the future of Portugal's hosting of the EURO 2004 competition: "The deadlines are all within what was predicted and the EURO
will be organized in an exemplary fashion," he said.
20/11/00
Minister of Sport, Armando Vara, met today with various figures involved in the organization of Euro 2004, including the presidents of FC Porto, Boavista and Sporting Braga, all clubs which are building new stadiums
to be used during the championship. After the meeting, the Minister declared that he was "confident" that all the stadiums and respective infrastructures are on course and will be ready on time.
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