The decision by UEFA to award the 2004 European Championship finals to Portugal was greeted with joy across the Iberian nation yesterday, but by some sour grapes amongst the rival bidders.
While football supporters celebrated the decision in the streets of Lisbon, the president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation insisted his country's bid was the best. And Beppo Mauhart, of the Austrian association, was quick to blame co-bidders Hungary for the failure of their attempt to host the event.
On the face of it the Spanish certainly presented a strong case, with far larger stadiums and much more experience of staging major events to boast of than their neighbours.
But before the decision was announced, the Portuguese sports minister remarked that "UEFA could simply hand the final stage of the Euro 2004 tournament to a country that already meets the conditions, but I believe that it has a duty to help promote soccer across Europe." The soccocrats appear to have taken heed.
The successful bid involves the extensive refurbishment of five stadiums as well as the construction of five new ones, four of them to replace existing club grounds. The fifth, at Almancil in the Algarve, will be a new development.
Included in the list of those to be upgraded is the vastly impressive but long neglected Stadium of Light, home of Lisbon's Benfica, where the Republic of Ireland were well beaten in their last match of the Euro '96 group stages. Amongst those to be rebuilt from scratch are the stadiums of the country's two other leading clubs, Porto and Sporting Lisbon.
The president of Portugal, Jorge Sampaio, described the success of the bid as a "big opportunity" to improve the infrastructure of a country which has never played host to a sporting event of this scale.
The government has already guaranteed to provide around £75 million of the £300 million cost of the work, while it has given generous tax breaks to the football association to help with the rest of the expenditure. It has also put up some £20 million to help promote the event.
Work will now start on improving areas of the nation's infrastructure which will be of particular benefit to the organisers, such as the rail and telecommunications networks.
The claim by the Austrians that the involvement of Hungary in their bid had weakened their effort appeared to hold some water last night: the document submitted to UEFA by the two countries contained some qualifications in the guarantees provided to organisers which were presumably based on reservations about the Hungarian economy. Nevertheless, the Hungarian FA indicated that it would bid again as soon the country achieved membership of the EU.
