UEFA today defended its decision to allow Tuesday's Champions League matches to go ahead just hours after the terror attacks in the United States.
UEFA's Director of Communications Mike Lee said: "I know we have been widely criticised for the decision, but those who have criticised us are doing so with the benefit of hindsight.
"What needs to be appreciated is that we were dealing on a pan-European level involving hundreds of thousands of fans across the continent, many of whom were either on their way to stadiums or at them already, and our security advice was that it would be far safer to allow the matches to go ahead than not.
"There was still an emerging picture from the United States and we had to strike the right balance and we believe we did. We had to avoid creating difficulty safety issues at the grounds involved.
"We were under no political pressure, or pressure from sponsors or broadcasters to play the games - none at all. On balance we believe we made the right decision given the time-scale and the logistics involved."
Many clubs including Real Madrid, AS Roma and Barcelona, as well as The Vatican, have criticised UEFA for allowing eight Champions League and five UEFA Cup matches to go ahead on Tuesday, before cancelling the rest of the week's European competition programme on Wednesday morning.
One consequence of UEFA calling the games off on Wednesday was that a large number of clubs had already travelled to their away fixtures and some have now lobbied UEFA for compensation for their travel costs.
Lee says UEFA was working out guidelines for compensation, but fans who travelled in vain would not be compensated by UEFA and would have to approach their clubs.