TheLeftBack

@ChelseaValky

Wednesday 6 June 2012

Euro 2012 update from a village near Wroclaw, Poland

Everywhere you look there are football flags, Poland flags and adverts about football (and it always makes me laugh how lager and unhealthy drinks and snacks are the main sponsors of a sporting event!)

They are giving free Poland flags away if you buy a certain brand of beer.

On the pitch it is a bit of a mess... the Polish National side has declared that it is too tired to train as there is too much 'weather pressure' so they are only doing half the training they are supposed to...

The Polish fans have been extremely welcoming to foreign teams who have had open training sessions - even the Germans were applauded onto the pitch for theirs!

In what did not surprise me for Polish organisation - there was a near riot for the free tickets given away to watch England train as no stewards were at the box office to maintain a queue and it was nearly Hillsbrough no. 2.

I watched the Czech training session and it seemed quite amateur... I somehow blagged my way into the media section and got talking with Petr Cech. It was nice to see him stay behind to sign autographs for the fans who attended (unlike many of his teammates - and Baros could not score for toffee in training too which I guffawed at!) and I rather embarrassingly said to Petr that if I was a girl I could kiss him!

Off the pitch the organisation is pretty average but not as bad as I thought it would be. If you bought tickets recently you can only collect them up to 3 days before the match starts. They have set up fan zones in the city centres which I think are going to breed absolute carnage as alcohol is the staple diet in Poland.

Looking forward to seeing the Poland Czech game in Wroclaw on 16th June and there is a good feel about everything... but there is still some last minute building work going on to make things spick and span... fingers crossed it all goes swimmingly.

If anyone needs some advice for matches they may be attending in Poland I am happy to help.