UEFA Euro 2016 starts in France

The fifteenth European football championship is about to start at the largest French stadium 'Stade de France'. The Continental championship will take place from June 10th to July 10th, in Paris, Saint-Denis (a suburb in Paris), Saint-Etienne, Nice, Lyon, Lille, Marseille, Bordeaux, Toulouse and Lens.

The national teams of France and Romania will play in the first match of the tournament. A 14 minute-opening ceremony will be organized before the game. It will be attended by 550 people, including 25 professional actors, as well as volunteers, mostly French living in Paris. The main star of the ceremony will be a French DJ and producer David Guetta who will perform the official anthem of the tournament together with Swedish singer Zara Larsson.

According to Andrea Franchizi, the general manager at the organizer of the event Filmmaster Events,the main novelty of the upcoming ceremony will be a special stage. "Earlier, we used the most lightweight and mobile stage sceneries, but this time we will use a huge stage on wheels, weighing 4.5 tons. This is a fundamentally new technology," he underlined.

According Franchizi, the most difficult part of the ceremony will be the final part of the show after that the football match will begin. "It is difficult from the organizational viewpoint, as it should take the actors two minutes to leave the football field with all properties despite the fact that all presentation will last 14 minutes," he explained.

One of the main topics of the upcoming European Championship will be safety issues. So, the French Minister for Cities' Affairs, Sports and Youth, Patrick Kanner assured that Euro-2016 will be an unprecedented sports event from the viewpoint of safety measures.

At the same time he pointed out that 77,000 policemen and 13,000 personnel of private security agencies will be involved during the European Championship to ensure safety at sporting events.

24 teams will participate in the competition this year for the first time in the history of the European championships.

The Russian national team will play in Group B against England, Slovakia and Wales. On Saturday, June 11 the Leonid Slutsky's team will play against England (at 10:00 pm MSK), on June 15th against Slovakia (at 16:00 pm), and on June 20th against Wales (at 10:00 pm). The A group: France, Romania, Albania, Switzerland. The C group: Poland, Northern Ireland, Germany, Ukraine. The D group: Turkey, Croatia, Spain, Czech Republic. The E group: Ireland, Sweden, Belgium, Italy. And the F group: Austria, Hungary, Portugal, Iceland.