More games, more countries, more travel: Does European football care about its climate impact?

Uefa faced criticism during the summer for the environmental impact of its pan-continent Euro 2020 tournament, an event staged in 11 countries.

The organisation’s president Aleksander Ceferin spoke of “taking the matches to more diverse communities across Europe” and Uefa defended its environmental impact, pointing to a lack of building work for new infrastructure and a goal to minimise and recycle waste, as well as a “gold-standard” programme for offsetting emissions.

Offsetting, though, is described as “massively problematic” and “lacking in scientific credibility” by Andrew Simms, Rapid Transition Alliance co-ordinator and co-director of New Weather Institute.

Uefa’s website talks of climate change as “a threat that endangers the entire planet” and states that the organisation “places a special emphasis on promoting climate action within the scope of its competitions”.

It is a signatory to the United Nations Sports for Climate Action Framework,, external an initiative that calls on sporting organisations to “display climate leadership”.

But as well as concerns over the Euros and expansion of club competitions, five of the past nine Champions League finals have been contested by teams from the same country in a foreign venue. Climate campaigners called on Uefa to put the environment at the heart of such hosting decisions to limit travel, a recommendation Uefa rejected.

So is Uefa living up to its commitments?

“Our mission is to manage our carbon footprint,” Michele Uva, Uefa’s director of football social responsibility, told BBC Sport.

“We are working to analyse the impact but our priority will be to reduce the footprint of each event and to offset remaining emissions.

“It’s impossible to cancel all our carbon emissions because the teams need to play and they cannot go by bicycle – they have to go by plane if the distance is far. We can minimise and we can check what’s the best way. Germany 2024 [the next men’s Euros] is fantastic for us because we are planning 17 activities linked to the environment. We cannot go directly to zero [emissions].”

Uva said Uefa would release an environmental sustainability strategy in December.

“We are setting targets and we are building our own Uefa sustainable event management system,” he added.

“There will be 18 parameters applied to each competition and we will monitor how each event will be sustainable. We will test this new system in England for women’s Euro 2022 and then we will apply the full project in Germany 2024. The next step will be to apply this system to all matches in Uefa competitions and then all at a domestic level.

“We have three years [up to Euro 2024] to work with clubs to understand how we can reduce. But we cannot say we want football without fans travelling to enjoy the match, being tourists and having an economic impact. This is part of what we love.

“The fans are travelling and producing carbon emissions but on the other hand fans are producing benefit for the economy and benefit socially. We have to balance our commitment to the environment with our commitment to the economy and social society. The combination of those factors need to have a positive effect.”

Asked whether Uefa’s rhetoric, in conjunction with the expansion of tournaments, is a case of ‘greenwashing’, Uva added: “We have billions of fans around the world and lots of attention from the media so we know we have the opportunity to be a driver on climate action and lead by example.

“We want to play our part. It’s not easy but we are absolutely engaged in this process.”

As a signatory to the UN Sports for Climate Action Framework, Uefa will now be expected to put actions before words.

“We are moving beyond pledges to really coming up with actions needed in the short and medium term,” Lindita Xhaferi-Salihu, the Sports for Climate Action lead at UN Climate Change, told BBC Sport.

“It will be important for our signatories to demonstrate how they are going to achieve these actions given their own operations. We have made it clear that to maintain signatory status these organisations will have to report publicly on how they are dealing with their commitments.”