The final has arrived and it will be contested between England and the Netherlands on the 21st of May. It can be said that it was a successful tournament in terms of organisation, considering that it was the first time that Malta hosted a high-profile tournament. Despite having our limits, we still provided the required hostility at the Seabank hotel, training pitches, and of course the venues. Considering our limits, this could be the only tournament that we are able to host, because from next year, all UEFA tournaments will have 16 participants. This means that more hostility and training pitches will be required so other countries will be "favoured’.
The players, together with the staff and their families, surely couldn’t argue against the weather because it seemed that summer had already started in Malta. This with the sole exception of the semi finals, because it was cloudy and even rained during the second semi-final. All teams, including Malta, were hosted at the Seabank hotel in Mellieha, where they could rest after matches, go to the pool, do some recovery training, and could socialise with the other players. For UEFA it is important that players interact with each other at this level because it leads to more respect between players on and off the pitch, a respect that would then be transmitted to the fans. The matches were held at Ta’ Qali National Stadium (including the final match), at the Paola Stadium, which was praised by the players, and finally at the Gozo Stadium, in which Malta scored their only couple of goals.
As part of the preparations for this tournament which started around one year ago with the restoration of the stadiums and training grounds, the MFA had launched a campaign called "Reach Out — The Campaign’. The aim of this campaign was to promote this tournament and to gather volunteers in order to help during the tournament itself. The campaign was a successful one, and there were about 500 volunteers (including myself as well). The volunteers were assigned different roles. There were match stewards, those who helped at the mixed zone (media zone), the ball boys and flag carriers, and those who took care of the Doping issues after the matches. There was a mixture of young and adult helpers, and this helped a lot because while the adults were useful with their experience, the younger ones transmitted their enthusiasm to the rest of the helpers and to the fans, especially during morning matches, when several school children attended the matches.
There was no doubt that this tournament would be highly attractive, and during the tournament one could notice several journalists and scouters of several top clubs such as Inter, Juventus and Chelsea. Many journalists reported to the UEFA official site since they are the organisers. They updated their social networks profiles every day so that people could be updated with what was happening on, but especially off, the pitch. But apart from the UEFA journalists, this tournament attracted even journalists from Italia (reporting for SKY) and Portuguese journalists (reporting for A bola).
Malta could only benefit from this tournament, either in terms of tourism, or as on a European level. The average attendance during the tournament was around 1,500, which is quite a decent attendance for a tournament like this. The sunny weather and the adequate facilities were surely a boost in order to make this tournament successful.
In the meantime, I would like to wish both teams the best of luck, they deserved to be in the final after producing some decent performances. Hopefully the final will be played with a positive atmosphere and the enthusiasm of the fans will be transmitted to the players in order to produce a highly interesting match.