2020 will be an important year for European sports, as two major competitions will take place then. Football and aquatic sports lovers will have an opportunity to watch their favourite athletes compete for trophies, and preparations have already been underway. Let’s briefly compare the two competitions and see what we can expect from them.
Euro 2020
2020 UEFA European Football Championship, which is also known just as UEFA Euro 2020 or Euro 2020, is the next big thing in football, given that it is the most popular sport in Europe. Qualification matches will decide which teams are going to participate in the final competition, and given that the last four World Cups were won by European countries, we could expect some really great football. Naturally, the favourite for winning Euro 2020 is France, but there are other strong teams that are expected to perform well this time.
Apart from the outstanding performance of Croatia which ended up second in the World Cup, football fans believe that other superpowers of this sport, such as Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and England, have similar chances of winning the Euro 2020.
Unlike the World Cup which is usually hosted by one or two countries, the European competition will take place in 12 cities of 12 different European countries. The final part of the Cup will begin on June 12 and will last for exactly one month, until July 12, 2020. A total of 24 teams will take a shot at winning the European title. At the moment, the defending champion of Europe is Portugal, which is also considered one of the favourites.
One of the novelties that are going to be introduced at Euro 2020 will be the VAR system, which is an abbreviation for Virtual Assistant Referee. VAR was used effectively during the World Cup to help referees when they had to make important decisions.
2020 European Aquatics Championships
The city of Budapest, the capital of Hungary, will be hosting the 2020 European Aquatics Championships. There will be four main events: swimming, diving, open water swimming, and synchro. Swimming competitions will start on May 11 and end on May 17, while all other events will last from May 18–24.
The Championships take place every two years as of 1999. Before this, Water polo was also an official part of the tournament, but it eventually became a stand-alone sport with the competition of its own.
Currently, the most successful country when it comes to the number of medals in aquatic sports is Russia, with a total of 178 gold, 107 silver, and 74 bronze medals. The next one is Germany that has more medals in total (434) but less gold medals (160) than Russia. However, due to political turmoil, other countries that were pretty successful in these events but do not exist anymore are East Germany, West Germany, and the Soviet Union.
The first Aquatics Championships took place in 1926, and Budapest also was the city which hosted the games back then. The last competition was held in 2018 in Glasgow, and Russia was the country to win the most medals, immediately followed by Great Britain and Italy.
The upcoming 2020 European Aquatics Championships is expected to be even more exciting than the previous one!
Conclusion
Both competitions are going to bring smiles to many faces, especially to people from the countries that win the most medals. Although Euro 2020 is a far more popular event among Europeans (and the Entire world), the 2020 European Aquatics Championships will be as exciting.