Festival of football draws closer

King Baudoin Stadium: Ready for opening ceremony

Euro 2000, the continent's major international football tournament, gets under way on Saturday with a spectacular opening ceremony.

The colourful event will be followed by the eagerly-anticipated opening match between Belgium and Sweden at Brussels' King Baudoin Stadium.

The game should be a compelling contest, with free-scoring Belgium roared on by a partisan crowd against the Swedes, who have emerged during the past two years as solid and determined competitors.

Details of the opening ceremony remain shrouded in secrecy, although the royal families from Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg will be present after arriving at the stadium in a supporter's bus.

It's very important to keep it in the mind but we also have to turn a new page and be in a new spirit

Lucien-Andre Beckers, director of the stadium which was once the scene of the Heysel disaster

Just as the 2002 World Cup will be staged in two countries, this tournament will span the nations of Belgium and Holland, with eight venues used to stage the matches.

The format of the tournament remains the same as four years ago - when the championships were staged in England - with 16 teams divided into four groups of four.

A total of 31 matches will be played, with eight teams qualifying from the group stages to compete in the knockout stages.

Fascinating fixtures

While enough hype has been generated to make the English public believe their team has a chance, the tournament favourites remain the Dutch and the French, with Spain also likely to make challenge.

The orange-clad Dutch fans are confident of success

But if everything goes to plan, this should be a fabulous competition, with an array of talent including the likes of Frenchman Zinedine Zidane, David Beckham, Portugal's Luis Figo and Italian Alessandro del Pierro all likely to take centre stage at some point.

The venue for the opening game is ironic. Fifteen years ago it was known as the Heysel stadium, the place where 39 football fans perished during a match between Liverpool and Juventus.

"We don't have to try to forget that. It's very important to keep it in the mind," said Euro 2000 stadium director Lucien-Andre Beckers.

"But we also have to turn a new page and be in a new spirit. Thirty-nine people died in this stadium and we never forget that.

Quiet streets

As both host countries prepared for a busy month of crowd control, the Belgian authorities reported that the capital was quiet just hours before Saturday's curtain raiser.

A young swedish fan crosses a police checkpoint in Brussels

The historic Grand Place central square in Brussels was awash with yellow and blue as fans in horned Viking helmets good-naturedly drowned the centre of Brussels in song.

There were no reports of trouble, while increased border controls have not resulted in any more fans being refused entry to the country.

"The situation is calm and we have no reason to be concerned over any particular security issues ahead of tonight's match," said Monique De Knop, head of the federal government's special Euro 2000 unit.

The only public order problems in Brussels have been outside an international business conference, where 69 people were arrested on Friday.