Vienna- While organizers work themselves into a veritable promotion frenzy
one year before the first ball is kicked at the Euro 2008 football championships
residents of co-host Austria remain remarkably cool towards the event.
The event itself has so far failed to catch the public's imagination.
Apart from a few posters at airports or in the cities there is little
indication Austria is hosting the biggest sporting event in its recent
history. Organizers plan to step up promotion considerably in the weeks
and months to come to raise public awareness.
Local football supporters are more concerned with how to solve the immediate
problems ailing Austrian football than thinking ahead to the big event.
If there is discussion about football these days, Euro 2008 is not anywhere
near the top of the agenda.
The issue concerning Austrian fans is the state of confusion in the Austrian
Bundesliga, with events slowly turning it into an operetta plot. One former
club president is under arrest, accused of embezzlement, two clubs have
filed for bankruptcy and a third decided to pack up and move to another
province.
Another reason for the lack of enthusiasm is the performance of Austria's
national team. Austrians are understandably concerned about the bad shape
of their team, fearing an early humiliation in the tournament.
While organizers enthuse over public viewing locations and plan exhibitions,
football fever is equally slow to manifest itself in the general public
away from the die-hard fans. Reactions range from general boredom to dread.
"There is so much fuss made right now, but the tournament starts
only one year from now," said one decidedly uninterested Austrian,
summing up the general atmosphere.
"I am so put off by that stupid thing. I really dread next summer,
it will be so annoying," Eva, a music student from Vienna said.
Football and Austria do not seem to go together in the minds of locals
and tourists alike. In the capital Vienna, residents worry over the influx
of fans in addition to the already steady stream of tourists flooding
the city each summer. Visitors find it equally hard to reconcile Austria's
idyllic mountains and historic buildings with the atmosphere of a football
tournament.
Even Austrian companies are slow to jump on the Euro 2008 bandwagon. Austria's
companies have not realized that this is a major marketing event, Salzburg's
tournament co-ordinator Wolfgang Weiss said.
"I hope we can still shake them awake to use the platform Euro 2008,"
he told the Austrian Press Agency.
Event organizers will have a though year ahead of them, turning general
boredom and inertia into the vibrant football party they imagine the Austrian-Swiss
Euro 2008 will become.
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08 Jun 2007
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