Belgium v Portugal friendly match no longer cancelled

After the attacks in Brussels Yesterday (Tuesday) the Belgian Football Association have announced that their planned Friendly with Portugal on March 29th has now been cancelled.  In a statement the Belgian F.A. said the city’s authorities asked for Tuesday’s match to be called off for “security reasons and precaution”.

I doubt it will come as a great surprise as the country still seeks to come to terms with what has happened. In the immediate aftermath of the Airport and Metro bombs the National Team cancelled a planned training session.

This is the second friendly in a row that has been cancelled due to terrorist atrocities with their planned friendly against Spain in November was also halted due to the events in Paris. It’s fair to say this hasn’t been the ideal warm up preparations for Belguim Manager Marc Wilmots

You could point to the fact that England played France soon after that game but that was at Wembley and not in Paris so I don’t think Belguim will want to take any risks by hosting the game at home to Portugal on Tuesday night

What repercussions will a second wave of City attacks so close to EURO 2016 have for the tournament. There are comments today that the games will be played behind closed doors but personally I think that is the most extreme scenario, what I would imagine though is that it will take a lot longer to get in the grounds before matches

UEFA will now have to assess all manor of contingency plans between now and June to eliminate any potential threats and make going to the matches as safe as humanly possible. In my opinion it’s far too big an event to host behind close doors, yes you can’t put a price on safety but why should so many have to miss out because of the actions of the few?

Edit: Just as luck would have it as soon as I write this there has been a change in events. Instead of being cancelled the friendly has now been moved to Portugal where it will be held in Leiria after an invitation by the Portuguese Football Association to host the fixture.