National Stadium opens at last

27th January 2012

Warsaw’s National Stadium will finally hold it’s first mass event this weekend. All the necessary licenses were in place this Friday bar permission from the fire brigade, and even they had stated they had no problems with the condition of the pitch area with regards to public safety. As a result, Sports Minister Joanna Mucha will win her bet with reporters and not have to jog round the outside of the stadium.

This means the National Stadium will open at the fourth time of asking. The inaugural match against Germany that was to have been played last autumn went ahead in Gdansk, in a stadium which had problems of its own.

The bet was made by Mucha earlier in the week during a press conference. Pressed by reporters as to whether she thought the opening event would take place this weekend, the minister made the offer, demonstrating her confidence that the stadium would finally open. “I bet you, the opening will go ahead, and if it doesn’t, I’ll run round the perimeter of the stadium, round the Palace of Culture, round whatever you like,” she told reporters.

All week, though, the arguments, last minute rush for licenses and general chaos continued. It started on Monday when Warsaw City Hall turned down the application to hold Sunday’s inaugural concert, as expected. At the same time as they refused the application, they stressed they would carry out another inspection later in the week and, all things considered, would issue a new decision.

Sanepid, which oversees health and hygiene matters, issued a positive decision, the police also gave a conditional okay, however building inspectors and the fire service pointed out a list of areas where the stadium was not up to scratch. “If the organisers can deal with those issues, then there’s nothing stopping us from issuing our approval for the event on Friday,” Ewa Gawor, director of the Office of Safety and Crisis Management at Warsaw City Hall, told reporters.

Meanwhile, Przeglad Sportowy is reporting this week about a potential problem for Smuda in assembling his squad prior to Euro 2012, in which Poland will play all their group matches in the National Stadium. While Smuda has forced through an early finish to the Polish league, with matches ending on May 6th, in other leagues, such as France and Turkey, where key players are based, games will go on to May 20th.

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