SFA chief executive Ian Maxwell has predicted that Scotland playing hosts Germany in the opening game of Euro 2024 will lead to a “desperate” scramble for tickets and admitted that he expects tens of thousands of Tartan Army footsoldiers to attend the finals.
Steve Clarke’s side were drawn to face Julian Nagelsmann’s team in the first match of the tournament at the Allianz Arena in Munich on Friday, June 14, in the Elbphilharmonie here in Hamburg last night.
His men will take on Switzerland in the RheinEnergieStadion in Cologne on Wednesday, June 19, and Hungary in the MHPArena in Stuttgart on Sunday, June 24, in their other Group A fixtures.
But Maxwell, who was in the Elbphilharmonie with Clarke, stated that getting Euro 2024 underway will be a huge honour for Scotland and confessed that he anticipates them having far more than 10,000 fans in the 70,000-capacity stadium.
“This is the one everybody wants to be involved in and we are delighted to be involved in it,” he said. “The build up to your first game at any tournament is brilliant, but to take part in the opening game of the tournament is fantastic.
““I am sure we will have a huge Tartan Army presence there. The way my phone is buzzing just now, the scramble for tickets will be pretty desperate, trust me.
“UEFA have said we will get 10,000 for the Scotland Supporters Club and they will be going on sale as soon as we can, later on this week.
“I can just imagine how quickly the UEFA website crashed as soon as they announced there were tickets on sale for that game and it will be mostly caused by people from Scotland for that game.
“Fans will be scrambling to buy tickets and buy flights and organise hotels and do other things, but, listen, that is a great problem to have. We would much rather fans had the challenges of trying to get there than us not being there at all.
“It is a fantastic honour to be playing in the opening game and listen we deserve to be there. We have shown in qualifying we have got a good team and we have got a real chance.”
Asked how many Scotland fans he expected to travel to Germany, Maxwell said: “Do you know what? I don’t know. There will be tens of thousands certainly. Whether we quite get to hundreds of thousands I don’t know.
“The number of people I have spoken to throughout the qualifying campaign that had already booked hotels and had already booked flights before they knew where we were playing.
“It just shows you the passion there is in the country and we will take huge numbers and they will all have a fantastic time. Everybody will be now talking about the finals from now on.
“Win games and everything changes. Football is very simple, we have got a really good coach and we have got a really good team and we have performed well on the park and it has made a huge difference to the country.”
Scotland won their opening five Euro 2024 qualifiers and secured their place in the finals with two games to spare – while Germany got in automatically as the host nation.
Maxwell is hopeful that not having played any competitive fixtures since the Qatar 2022 finals will work in the national team’s advantage and optimistic they can pull off a huge upset.
“It is a big game for them,” he said. “They have not played a competitive match for a while obviously because they are the host nation.
“It’s in their country so they will want to make a good start, but they won’t want a good start any more than we will because Steve and the guys will be desperate to do the same.
“They are not playing competitive matches so you can read as much or as little into that as you want. You can spin it either way. All that’s going to matter is what happens at the end of 90 minutes at the end of the first game and hopefully it’s Scotland that’s celebrating.”
