France holds its breath as Euros get under way

France held its breath last night.

As the European Championships – the second biggest football tournament in the world - began with the host nation meeting Romania at the Stade de France in Paris, this was a country where excitement about a sporting tournament was mixed with anxiety over security.

Last November – on a Friday night – the Stade de France in the north of the capital had been one of the targets when 130 people were killed in terrorist attacks around Paris.

Since then there has been huge concern within France, and across Europe, that Euro 2016 will be tempting for similar high-profile attacks.

The tournament is the largest-ever European Championships with 24 countries ranging from both Irelands in the west to Russia and Turkey in the east and the scale of the 30-day event is matched by the security response.

There are as many as 90,000 police, soldiers and private security operators on alert across the nine host cities.

Jacques Lambert, president of the Euro 2016 organising committee, said this week: “We want to lift ourselves out of the negative spiral around security that was imposed on us.”

But security has been impossible to ignore at transport hubs, city-centre streets and at the various teams’ training grounds.

There has already been some hooliganism in Marseilles involving England fans.

France’s internal tension has been added to by a series of industrial disputes that has seen trains and flights cancelled – a situation that is ongoing. Given the recent flooding in Paris, there is even pessimism about the weather.

Yet there was still a desire for optimism last night, France’s main TV station following the team bus around Paris’s periphery as it made for the Stade de France. Home fans followed in cars waving flags and scarves and hoping for the best.