Belgium’s friendly against Portugal, scheduled for next week, has been cancelled in the wake of Tuesday’s terrorist attacks in Brussels.
The match was due to have taken place on Tuesday, March 29th at the King Baudouin Stadium in Brussels but the Royal Belgian Football Association announced it has been called off at the request of Brussels authorities.
A statement on belgianfootball.be read: “For security reasons and precaution, the City of Brussels has asked the Belgian FA to cancel the match Belgium — Portugal on 29 March.
“The match of our Belgian Red Devils against Portugal, scheduled Tuesday night at the King Baudouin Stadium, will not take place.”
Explosions at Brussels’ international airport and a metro station killed more than 30 people and injured many more.
The Belgium team cancelled their scheduled training session on Tuesday out of respect for the victims.
It is the second successive friendly match that Belgium have had cancelled after their scheduled clash with Spain in Brussels was called off in November following the Paris atrocities.
A series of coordinated attacks in the French capital that had been planned in Brussels killed 130 people and saw the terror threat level in the Belgian capital raised to its maximum.
Meanwhile, Uefa has insisted there are no plans to play matches at Euro 2016 behind closed doors in response to the increased security threat.
Speaking to French radio station Radio 24, Uefa executive committee vice-president Giancarlo Abete was quoted as saying: ”We can’t exclude the possibility of playing behind closed doors as we cannot exclude terrorism.”
But Uefa said in a statement: ”We are confident that all security measures will be in place for a safe and festive Euro and therefore there are no plans to play matches behind closed doors.
”However, we are nevertheless working on contingency plans and on multiple scenarios around crisis situations since we take the security of all participants (players, fans, etc) very seriously.”
The Stade de France, the venue for the opening match of Euro 2016 between France and Romania on June 10th, was one of the targets in November.
One attacker tried to enter the stadium but his explosive vest was discovered by security and he blew himself up, killing a bystander. Two other terrorists also blew themselves up nearby.
