Encouraging a revolution

Football crazy
"When I get to passport control at the airport, the official says 'are you back to look at more stadiums, Mr Walker?' and in restaurants people ask me which is the best of the ten stadiums. The depth of interest and the media coverage is staggering," Walker said. "Visiting the ten venues usually means ten press conferences and ten armies of journalists. In Scotland, we think that we are football crazy, but you would never see anything like that!"

Remarkable project
"But then we're talking about a truly remarkable project," the Scot continued. "It's amazing that a country of this size should be constructing ten new stadiums at the same time. In some countries, including my own, building one stadium is complicated enough! So Portugal is going through a process of multiplying those complications by ten. Each venue has thrown up its own challenges and the problems have been diverse – financial, political, media pressure and so on. We mustn't forget that building a stadium is not a simple task.

Past reference
"It's always worth using the past as a point of reference and, let's face it, Portugal was in one of the worst situations in western Europe in terms of the country's football fabric. It was evident that Portugal needed facilities to match the skills of their players.

A revolution
"My first visit was to examine Portugal's bid when they were candidates to stage the final tournament. It was a question of visiting cities because it was a waste of time looking at the existing stadiums. I couldn't help thinking that it's always easy to talk and to plan and that people would be highly sceptical of Portugal's capacity to turn the ideas into reality – especially when the idea was to build ten completely new stadiums. I was only concerned with technical aspects related to venues and in my report – this is no secret – I stated that Spain, in terms of facilities, would be capable of hosting the event in six months. Portugal, I said, did not have a single stadium up to UEFA's standards.

Winning ticket
"But, as you know, Portugal's bid was the winner and we became engaged on a construction project that is probably the biggest European football has ever known. It's fantastic for Portugal because it's going to take them from, let's say, the third division to the top of the premier league in terms of facilities. The new stadiums will be permanent assets for the game in Portugal – places where supporters will be happy to take their mothers, wives and kids to enjoy a game in optimal conditions. To use a hackneyed word, it's a revolution."

Aim to encourage
Walker admits that he has witnessed a rapid transition from pessimism to optimism since he started his regular visits to the venues. "I took the line right from the beginning that they didn't need me to tour Portugal moaning and groaning," he said. "I have tried to appreciate the difficulties and, indeed, I've become involved in many of them myself. Faced with such a challenge, the last thing the Portuguese needed was negative messages being transmitted by UEFA. So my aim has basically been to give them a spur rather than to discourage.

Positive mood swing
"The mood has swung dramatically. Not that long ago, people were still talking about not being ready in time and even suggesting that Portugal should withdraw. But there has been a transformation. By the way, our deadline is September. We have never had a tournament before where we have insisted that all the stadiums should be ready almost a year in advance. In the past, some tournaments have kicked off amid the smell of fresh paint and worries that the players might stick to the benches in the dressing room! There is still work to do, but everything seems to be coming together."

This article, which is reproduced here in the form of an extract, first appeared in the UEFA EURO 2004™ Newsletter No. 4, June 2003.
© UEFA 2003