Finland ready to welcome Europe

After three years of preparations, UEFA WOMEN'S EURO 2009™ kicks off in Finland on Sunday. Tournament director Outi Saarinen is hoping for big crowds in Helsinki, Lahti, Tampere and Turku and speaks about the scale of the event, which runs until 10 September with 12 competing nations.

What is the interest in Finland for this tournament?

Outi Saarinen: Our women did really well in England in 2005 [reaching the semi-finals] and at that time the interest in the women's national team was at the same level as the men's national team which is the best and highest interest you can have in Finland for sport. So I expect the same, of course, when we are playing on home ground. When Finland are playing and our team is on I am expecting a lot of spectators and a lot of interest.

What is your target for spectators?

Saarinen: Our goal is 250,000 spectators, which will be 10,000 per game on average. It is a very ambitious figure because we have to bear in mind that it includes people that go not only to Finland games but other teams as well. This is the first, and I believe the last, senior football competition that we will play in Finland. We have never hosted either a men's or women's final tournament and now we are having the best women's teams in Finland so I expect a lot of people to be interested in that.

How has the support from the different cities and regions been?

Saarinen: To achieve our spectator goals we, of course, have worked a lot with clubs and schools. We are not expecting those 250,000 people to be paid customers but we are expecting a lot from the schools and also a lot of the 'football family' to see the matches. We have a lot of people around the different cities working very hard to get a lot of people in the stands.

What has happened to Finnish women's football in the past 10 years?

Saarinen: The number of players has been on the rise, ten per cent a year for quite a long time. We just opened a women's football exhibition and sports museum last week and there we went through the history of the women's national team which actually only started in the 1970s, which is amazing if you think about it. It is a very young sport and it was funny − in this exhibition you could really see that in the 1970s there were very few black and white photos and not much coverage of women's football, whereas since 2005 there are a lot of very good shots and a lot of material you can have, so it has changed dramatically. I think it is the case in many sports and any walk of life − if you are successful people are interested.

How many people are involved and will be involved in the final tournament?

Saarinen: For the draw which was held in November we had already recruited the first volunteers and we had something like 100 volunteers. The good thing about volunteering in Finland is that there are certain people interested in it. It doesn't matter if we are talking about the Eurovision Song Contest, athletics, hockey or football; there are people interested in big international events. Right now I think we have around 600 volunteers.