It was a tight and sometimes tortuous quarter final with both teams seemingly unwilling to go on the offensive for fear of leaving space for the other team to exploit. To be honest, it was a very poor game with little in the way of goalmouth action. The stadium, originally built in 1931, was renovated for the tournament with the capacity increased to 51,718 with the accommodation of temporary seating. The venue for the quarter final, the Ernst Happel Stadium on the River Danube, hosted three group games, two quarter finals, one semi as well as the final.

It was an ideal location for fans to watch the match and enjoy the fine Austrian weather (in excess of 30 degrees on the weekend of the quarter finals). The venue had 10 giant screens, 80 food & drink stalls (selling Viennese “Krautfleisch”, picknickstangerl and official beer) and room for 70,000 visitors. I watched Russia beat Holland in extra time from the impressive Vienna Fan Zone that occupied a 1.2 km long stretch of the city in front of the National Parliament, City Hall and Hofburg Palace. Let’s hope we do better with that application. Scotland, Wales and Ireland have recently put a bid in for the 2020 tournament. Who can forget the farcical scenes of UEFA officials being shown a stadium that they didn’t have permission to use (Croke Park), an empty field out in Abbotstown (the proposed Bertie Bowl) and a rundown stadium long past its sell by date (Lansdowne Road). Ireland were to provide two all seater stadiums with Scotland providing four. However, let us not forget that it could have been Scotland and Ireland hosting the championships rather than Austria and Switzerland.īack in 2002, the FAI had teamed up with Scotland in an attempt to host the tournament. We were never in the running for qualification for EURO 2008 after some disastrous results under Steve Staunton’s managerial reign. From the Irish perspective, we were only interested spectators but not participants in that finals. The tournament in Austria and Switzerland provided numerous memorable matches with impressive attacking displays from teams like Spain, Holland and Croatia. The only game they failed to score in was the quarter final when they progressed passed Italy on penalties following a 0-0 draw in a game I watched from the stands. In their six games they scored 12 goals whilst conceding only three. Spain were worthy champions in the last championship playing a brand of stylish football based on crisp passing and counter attacking. In that UEFA EURO 2008 final Spain defeated Germany 1-0. Meanwhile up in Gdansk in the same Group, Spain play Italy, a team they knocked out in the last Euros en route to the final. On Sunday, Ireland will play their first game at a European Championship in 24 years when they take on Croatia in Poznan.

Uefa euro 2008 game