On the eve of the Euro 2016 final between France and Portugal, ground staff at the gigantic Stade de France in Paris had left the stadium’s lights on, for security reasons. Attracted by the blinding floodlights, thousands upon thousands of migrating Silver Y moths descended into the empty arena. Those not killed by the heat of the lamps eventually ended up among the grass of the playing surface, where, after the lights were turned off, they hid throughout the day of the big match.
As evening fell, 80,000 spectators took their seats and the lights were turned back on. The sleeping moths stirred, and soon thousands were zigzagging among the players. Photographs taken that night show annoyed football officials picking moths off each other’s suits, while the swarm blocked the lenses of TV cameras and hung from the goalposts. Perhaps the highlight came when Cristiano Ronaldo sat injured and weeping on the pitch, while a lone Silver Y sipped his teardrops away.
As the Portuguese superstar had discovered, the mingling of urban development with the natural world can throw up some weird and wonderful occurrences. Cities are like mad scientists, creating their own crazy ecological concoctions by throwing all kinds of native and foreign elements into the urban melting pot, then spicing it up with artificial light, pollution, impervious surfaces and a host of other challenges. Researchers around the globe are documenting how globalisation and urbanisation are changing the behaviour and evolution of animals.
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Indeed, evolutionary biologists no longer need to travel to remote places like the Galápagos to discover their holy grail: speciation, the formation of new and distinct species in the course of evolution. The process is going on right in the very cities where they live and work.
The urban melting pot
In tune with their human population, cities have been assembled from immigrants from around the globe. Either intentionally or accidentally, people have been ferrying flora and fauna across the world for as long as they have been trading and travelling.
The ubiquitous Javan myna birds of Singapore first arrived as pets from Indonesia around 1925, sought after at the time as virtuoso impersonators. They now rival the human population in terms of numbers (and noise). The bright-green ring-necked parakeet, originally hailing from India and Africa, has established itself in European cities thanks to the caged-bird trade for much of the 20th century. In London, they feast on seeds of horse chestnut trees brought from Greece.
Releasing 40 parakeets in 1974 “because Brussels could use some more colour”, the owner of a Belgian zoo singlehandedly founded the country’s entire population, now numbering some 30,000 birds.
At the end of the 19th century, drug manufacturer Eugene Schieffelin decided to bring to the US every bird ever mentioned in the works of Shakespeare. In 1890 and 1891, he shipped 80 breeding pairs of European starlings (Henry IV Part 1) from England and released them in New York’s Central Park. Today, there are about as many starlings as there are people in North America.
Our gardens, balconies and parks are stocked with plants from all over the world, which then provide food for a motley crew of animals from all continents. In Malaysian cities, European rock pigeons are ripping out the flower buds of Chinese hibiscus bushes planted along the pavements. In Perth, the Indian northern palm squirrel was released in 1898 and since then has maintained a healthy population thanks to the abundant fruits of African date palms and other exotic palm trees in the city. The urban loom weaves food webs from weft and warp that are thrown together by chance, linking species in new and exciting patterns.
Places where human activity reaches fever pitch abound with exotic species. These urban ecosystems are formed not by ages of evolution or the slow colonisation by species under their own steam and of their own choice, but by human diligence alone. And that human urbanisation has had a sometimes surprising impact on the behaviour of animals.
The nut-cracking crows of Sendai
In the Japanese city of Sendai, the local carrion crows famously discovered how to use passing traffic as a nutcracker, dropping nuts among the wheels of slow-driving cars and picking up the flesh after the car had passed. For nearly a century in the UK, the milk bottle top-opening skills of tits – lively songbirds with a handsome pattern of yellow, black, and blue and olive-green – have been astounding and annoying city dwellers. Indeed, when manufacturers eventually introduced metal caps, the birds simply learned to hammer a hole in and then pull away the foil in strips.
In Vienna, spiders have been observed to ignore their natural preference for the dark in favour of weaving their webs on sections of a bridge lit with fluorescent tubes. The spiders in the artificially lit “habitat” caught up to four times more prey in their webs than the ones that stayed in the dark. And when ornithologists in Mexico discovered an abundance of cigarette butts in the nests of house sparrows and finches, they were unsure why. Was it simply because the butts made the nests more comfy, or could the birds have noticed that nicotine – an anti-insect agent – could help to keep mites, fleas and lice at bay?
The impact of cities is not just evident in the behaviour of animals – urbanisation has also changed the course of animal evolution.
Researchers in the US found that the wingspan of American cliff swallows, which took up the habit of colonising concrete highway bridges in the 1980s, had decreased by about two millimetres a decade since then. Not much, and perhaps not really worth noticing if their measurements on the roadkill had not shown the exact opposite pattern: by the 2010s, the wings of dead birds by the roadside were about half a centimetre longer than those of live birds still happily flapping along. Also, even though the pressure of traffic had remained the same or even increased, the numbers of dead birds declined by almost 90%.
The shape of a bird’s wing is not something that evolution can mess with with impunity. It is very closely wedded to a bird’s way of life. Long pointed wings are better for fast flying in a straight line, while short rounded wings are good for making rapid turns or for quickly taking off.
The conclusion was inescapable: only cliff swallows with wings short enough to take off vertically from the tarmac to escape an oncoming car had managed to get away and spread their short-wing genes in the gene pool. The tardier long-winged ones ended up as ex-swallows on the hard shoulder, their long-wing genes excluded from the pool. And, as the surviving swallows became ever better adapted at evading approaching vehicles, the number of casualties plummeted.
When researchers consulted the bird collections of eight natural history museums in North America and took measurements on the shape of the wings of 312 starlings, they discovered something interesting. The starlings’ wings had gradually become more rounded over time, because the secondary flight feathers (at the bird’s “lower arm”, closest to the body) had become elongated by some 4%.
It is precisely this quick-response benefit of more rounded wings that may be one of the reasons that the settler starlings evolved. In those 120 years since Schieffelin had released the starlings’ founding fathers in Central Park, the human population in western North America (the part of the continent that the starling expanded into) grew almost fifty-fold. What had been tiny settlements when the starling arrived blossomed into metropolises in a matter of decades. And with urbanisation came new dangers for urban birds: cats and cars. It is quite likely that this is what caused the American starlings to evolve a wing shape that helped them get out of the way of a pouncing cat or a speeding motorcar hurtling towards them.
Cities have even begun to form new species, and for evidence we need look no further than Turdus merula, the blackbird – one of the world’s oldest and best studied urban animals.
Turdus urbanicus
First, blackbirds began wintering in the city. Then, sometimes only many decades later, a few winter visitors stuck around for spring and eventually took up breeding with one another, gave up migration altogether and turned into resident city-birds, abandoning the forest.
That’s about as much as one can glean from field guides and birders’ reports. To really get a feel for what makes the new urban blackbird different from its ancestral forest blackbird, we have to look at the work that an entire cottage industry of urban blackbird researchers has been doing over the past 20 years. In almost every European country, a team of biologists has stepped up and jointly built a veritable urban evolution fest around this one bird species. All this research seems to point in one direction: that the urban blackbird is evolving into a separate species, a case of true speciation.
Across Europe and North Africa, city blackbirds have been found to have shorter, stubbier bills than forest blackbirds, presumably thanks to the easy pickings at bird feeders and other places in the cities where food can be had without pecking, probing or pincering. Whether it’s due to those different beaks is not sure yet, but urban blackbirds sound different too. The urban background noise forces the blackbird songsters to change their pitch and timing.
As researchers in the Netherlands found out after recording almost 3,000 songs, urban blackbird concerts are performed at a higher pitch than forest ones, while a German research team discovered that, as foretold by Paul McCartney, urban blackbirds are singing in the dead of night. In the city centre of Leipzig, they start a full three hours before sunrise, well before the trams and cars start creating a racket. Forest blackbirds open their beaks only at dawn. They also start breeding earlier in the year than their sylvan relatives, as their biological clocks are advanced by more than a month.
A second reason that the city blackbirds breed earlier is that they don’t migrate. They spend the winter in the city, leisurely picking food off feeding tables, and can start breeding when they feel like it. The forest blackbirds on the other hand are, by and large, migratory: to escape the cold and the scarcity of food, they spend the winter in the south and only when they return to their home ground can they begin breeding. By that time, the blackbirds in the city are already smugly ensconced in their nests.
It is important to know that many of the differences were revealed in the laboratory, with forest and city blackbirds that had been reared as chicks under the exact same circumstances. So, they differ by nature (that is, genetically), rather than having learnt different modes of life.
One could argue that over the past centuries, Turdus merula has spawned a new species, Turdus urbanicus, if you will. It’s not quite there yet, but it’s a matter of time for the process to be completed.
The chances are that Turdus urbanicus will be the first in an ever-growing compendium of new species to have evolved in that new, expanding environment: the city. As things stand, cities are still a new phenomenon on Earth, and most urban animals and plants have only begun adapting to them for the past few centuries, millennia at the most. But if we can sustain our urbanised existence into the distant future (a big if), future generations might see the evolution of a unique and truly urban ecosystem.
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On the eve of the Euro 2016 final between France and Portugal, ground staff at the gigantic Stade de France in Paris had left the stadium’s lights on, for security reasons. Attracted by the blinding floodlights, thousands upon thousands of migrating Silver Y moths descended into the empty arena. Those not killed by the heat of the lamps eventually ended up among the grass of the playing surface, where, after the lights were turned off, they hid throughout the day of the big match. As evening fell, 80,000 spectators took their seats and the lights were turned back on. The sleeping moths stirred, and soon thousands were zigzagging among the players. Photographs taken that night show annoyed football officials picking moths off each other’s suits, while the swarm blocked the lenses of TV cameras and hung from the goalposts. Perhaps the highlight came when Cristiano Ronaldo sat injured and weeping on the pitch, while a lone Silver Y sipped his teardrops away.As the Portuguese superstar had discovered, the mingling of urban development with the natural world can throw up some weird and wonderful occurrences. Cities are like mad scientists, creating their own crazy ecological concoctions by throwing all kinds of native and foreign elements into the urban melting pot, then spicing it up with artificial light, pollution, impervious surfaces and a host of other challenges. Researchers around the globe are documenting how globalisation and urbanisation are changing the behaviour and evolution of animals.Indeed, evolutionary biologists no longer need to travel to remote places like the Galápagos todiscover their holy grail: speciation, the formation of new and distinct species in the course of evolution. The process is going on right in the very cities where they live and work. In tune with their human population, cities have been assembled from immigrants from around the globe.
The Guardian , Darwin comes to town: how cities are creating new species (2018)
Moebius, Arzach, 1976
vty
vty is professor on Landscape Theory and Landscape design at the Catalonian Politecnical University in Barcelona and at the Politecnico di Milano
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Установите соответствие тем A—G текстам 1-6. Занесите свои ответы в таблицу. Используйте каждую букву только один раз. В задании одна тема лишняя. TEST 10 (part 1) |
A. EXPENSIVE EQUIPMENT 6
B. CONFUSING RULES
C. NO WINNERS OR LOSERS 5
D. LEARNING AND ENJOYMENT 4
E. IN CONTROL 1
F. A MAJOR EVENT 2
G. A DANGEROUS ACTIVITY 3
1. In football and rugby it’s the ‘referee’, in tennis and cricket it’s the ‘umpire’. Whatever name each sport decides to give to this particular person, their role is essentially the same. They are in charge. They start and stop the game, they make sure the players follow the rules, and they have the power to make decisions when there are disagreements between players on opposing teams. With this power comes responsibility, however, and referees and umpires must be equally fair to both teams.
Ответственность судьи. IN CONTROL
2. The most important game in American football each year is the Super Bowl. This is the final of the National Football League, which is held either on the last Sunday of January or the first Sunday of February. This championship game is so popular in the States that it’s always one of the most watched TV shows of the year. At any one moment during the game, approximately 80 to 90 million Americans are watching it on TV !
Огромная популярность американского футбола. A MAJOR EVENT
3. Motorcycle racing has been popular with riders and spectators alike for about a hundred years. The high speeds at which the riders go, however, can sometimes lead to disaster. For example, on the Isle of Man, which is a small island between England and Ireland, an annual motorcycle race called the Isle of Man TT has been held since 1907. The roads and tracks which the riders race on are extremely narrow, increasing the chances of accidents. Since the race started, almost 180 riders have been killed while racing there.
Опасность гонок на мотоцикле. A DANGEROUS ACTIVITY
4. If you ask most people why they choose to do a particular sport, they’ll probably tell you it’s because it’s fun and gives them pleasure. They might also say that it helps keep them fit. Another major benefit of team sports such as football, basketball, cricket and rugby is that they can teach us to work together as a group. This is particularly useful for children, who can then use the skills they have learnt while doing sports in their working and social lives as adults.
Блага, которые даёт занятие спортом. LEARNING AND ENJOYMENT
5. Although most sports are competitive, involving individuals or teams trying to be better than their opponents, recreational fishing is quite different. Whether you’re salt-water fishing in the sea, or fresh-water fishing in a river or lake, whether you’re on your own or with other people, fishing is about relaxation, enjoyment and the occasional moment of excitement. There are no prizes for catching the most or the biggest fish, and no one goes home at the end of the day thinking they’ve lost. It’s not that kind of sport.
Рыбалка даёт релаксацию. NO WINNERS OR LOSERS
6. The games snooker and pool, both of which involve hitting balls into pockets on a table covered with material, are extremely popular in the UK, and many pubs have either a pool or a snooker table. If you want to play at home, though, it can be costly. A full-size professional snooker table can cost several thousand pounds — the price of a new car, in other words — and a good ‘cue’, which is the name of the stick used to hit the white ball, can cost several hundred pounds.
Настольные игры весьма дорогое удовольствие. EXPENSIVE EQUIPMENT
| № текста | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| тема | E | F | G | D | C |
A |
ВСЕ ТЕСТЫ
SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — The Latest from the European Championship (all times local):
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11:32
Portugal wins the 2016 European Championship, after substitute Eder scored in extra time to give his team a 1-0 win over France.
Eder’s long-range shot that beat the despairing dive of France captain Hugo Lloris has sealed a first ever major tournament win for Portugal, beating the hosts despite losing captain Cristiano Ronaldo to a first-half injury.
Eder shook off Laurent Koscielny and fired a low, right-foot shot to break French hearts in the 109th minute after the match at the Stade de France had ended level at 0-0 after 90 minutes.
Ronaldo was taken off on a stretcher off in the 25th minute after he failed to recover from a heavy challenge by France’s attacking midfielder Dimitri Payet. He returned to sit on the bench, his left knee bandaged, and limped onto the pitch to encourage his teammates at the start of both periods of extra time.
Euro 2016 final: Portugal vs. France
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10:21 p.m.
Eder has finally broken the deadlock in the 109th minute of the final, giving Portugal a 1-0 lead over France when he cut inside from the left, brushed off a challenge by Laurent Koscielny and fired a low shot into the bottom corner from 20 meters.
Injured teammate Cristiano Ronaldo came off the Portugal bench to congratulate the Lille midfielder.
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11:18 p.m.
GOAL: Eder scores for Portugal in the 109th minute. Portugal leads France 1-0.
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11:12 p.m.
The stalemate between France and Portugal has continued through the first period of extra time in the final, with the scores still locked at 0-0.
Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo, his left knee strapped, limped onto the pitch at the end of the match to gee up his teammates, hugging players before making his way back to the bench, but his team looked happy to take the match to penalties.
William Carvalho snuffed out a promising French attack in the 97th minute by bringing down Kingsley Coman, earning a yellow card from referee Mark Clattenburg.
The best chance of the half to fell to Portugal’s Eder, with his close-range effort being saved by Hugo Lloris following a corner.
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10:51 p.m.
France and Portugal will play extra time after their European Championship final ended 0-0 after 90 minutes.
Despite Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo being carried off on a stretcher in the first half, Didier Deschamps’ team couldn’t find a way through the Portugal defense and its standout goalkeeper Rui Patricio.
France’s Antoine Griezmann has so far failed to add to his tournament-leading six goals and was guilty of a bad miss in the second half when he headed over from close range after a cross from the left by substitute Kingsley Coman.
Portugal rarely threatened and it wasn’t until the 80th minute that France captain Hugo Lloris was called upon to make his first saves, blocking a cross by Nani and then a spectacular effort on the rebound by Ronaldo’s replacement, Ricardo Quaresma.
France’s best player, Moussa Sissoko unleashed a powerful long-range drive in the 84th minute, but Rui Patricio again got down well to block the shot.
France’s best chance came in stoppage time when substitute Andre-Pierre Gignac hit the post.
Ronaldo left the match in the 25th minute after he failed to recover from Dimitri Payet clattering into his left knee.
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10:35 p.m.
France has squandered two clear chances in the second half of its European Championship final against Portugal and the match is still locked at 0-0.
Tournament top scorer Antoine Griezmann missed probably the clearest chance of the final in the 66th minute when he shook off defender Raphael Guerreiro in the penalty area and leapt to meet a cross from the left by Kingsley Coman, but could not keep his header down and saw it fly over the bar.
A few minutes later, Olivier Giroud then saw his powerful shot saved by Portugal goalkeeper Rui Patricio, who is on outstanding form.
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10:20 p.m.
The second half has begun with host France still dominant and pushing for the opening goal, but Portugal, even without its injured captain Cristiano Ronaldo, occasionally looking dangerous on the counterattack.
With the scores still locked at 0-0 in the 58th minute, Didier Deschamps brought off Dimitri Payet, whose foul in the first half ended Ronaldo’s match, and brought on Kingsley Coman in an attempt to inject more pace on the flank.
France failed to mount a serious challenge on Rui Patricio’s goal early in the half, with Paul Pogba’s long-range effort sailing harmlessly over the bar and Antoine Griezmann’s shot from the left easily saved by the Portugal goalkeeper.
A fan ran onto the pitch early in the second half. The man, who was wearaing a white shirt, was quickly tackled by stewards and dragged off the ground.
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9:50 p.m.
After Portugal captain Cristiano Ronaldo was carried off on a stretcher in the 25th minute of the European Championship final, France and Portugal were drawing 0-0 at halftime.
Ronaldo injured his left knee after France midfielder Dimitri Payet clattered into him near the halfway line in the seventh minute. After treatment, the Real Madrid star tried to play on, but even with his knee bandaged he eventually sat down and called to be substituted.
France dominated early and Antoine Griezmann came close to adding to his tournament-leading six goals with a looping header that Rui Patricio athletically tipped over his bar.
France midfielder Moussa Sissoko was a constant threat with powerful runs from the midfield. He came close to breaking the deadlock in the 34th minute when he cleverly turned Portugal defender Adrien Silva and shot powerfully, but Rui Patricio got down well to his right to block the effort.
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9:35 p.m.
Paris police report there have been clashes with young troublemakers underneath the Eiffel Tower and that police have used tear gas to disperse them.
The clashes happened about 100 meters from a huge fan zone and giant screen relaying the final of the European Championship between France and Portugal.
There only appeared to be a few dozen troublemakers, who seemed to want to break into the fan zone, which contains about 80,000 people watching the game.
Some garbage was set alight in the street under the massive tower, which dominates the Paris landscape.
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9:30 p.m.
Cristiano Ronaldo leaves the match on a stretcher in the 25th minute and is replaced by Ricardo Quaresma. The Portugal captain was taken off after handing his armband to Nani.
Ronaldo had briefly left the pitch in tears at the Stade de France, minutes after a clumsy challenge by Dimitri Payet left him screaming in pain and clutching his left knee.
Portugal medical staff bandaged their captain’s knee on the sideline and he returned to the game for a few minutes, but was unable to continue.
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9:15 p.m.
France has dominated the first 15 minutes of the final against Portugal, with tournament top scorer Antoine Griezmann sending in a looping header that forced an athletic diving save from Rui Patricio.
Despite France pressing forward early, Nani had the first serious shot on goal in the fourth minute, running onto a long pass by Cedris Soares but firing over Hugo Lloris’ goal.
But after that it was all France.
Moussa Sissoko blazed a volley a long way over the bar in the sixth minute and a minute later Griezmann fired wide after more good work by Sissoko put him clear behind the Portugal defense.
Portugal then faced a major setback when captain Cristiano Ronaldo fell to the ground screaming in pain and clutching his left knee after a clumsy challenge by Dimitri Payet near the halfway line.
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9:05 p.m.
Nani has kicked off the final of the European Championship for Portugal against France at the Stade de France. Nani beat Olivier Giroud before passing the ball backward.
Portugal quickly lost possession and France opened its home final on the attack.
Portugal keeper Rui Patricio is defending the goal in front of the largest section of Portugal supporters.
Barely four minutes later, Nani had the first scoring chance of the match when he collected a long ball forward and fired his shot over the top.
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8:50 p.m.
Spanish midfielder Xavi Hernandez has brought the European Championship trophy onto the pitch at the Stade de France, holding it aloft four years after Spain won the cup in Kiev, Ukraine, by beating Italy 4-0.
Xavi lofted the silverware alongside a giant inflatable version of the cup in the center circle that subsequently towered over French DJ David Guetta during the match’s opening ceremony.
Earlier, French and Portuguese fans around the stadium joined forces for the «Huh» Viking chant that Iceland made famous at the tournament.
Both sets of fans clapped their hands, rhythmically building to a crescendo of applause as their teams continued their warmups.
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8:30 p.m.
The official team sheet handed out by UEFA for Sunday night’s European Championship final contained a surprise weather forecast.
At the bottom of the sheet, under the lists of players, UEFA wrote: «Weather conditions: Snow.» Temperatures, it added, would be a far-from-freezing 28 degrees Celsius (81 Fahrenheit) with humidity at 38 percent.
The only blizzard in sight at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis was the huge swarm of moths that descended on the playing surface.
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8:15 p.m.
France captain Hugo Lloris has run onto the pitch at the Stade de France to begin his pre-match warmup ahead of the final against Portugal.
Lloris was greeted by a wall of French tricolor flags behind his goal as he took to the field with his team’s two reserve goalkeepers, Steve Mandanda and Benoit Costil.
Next onto the Stade de France pitch was Portugal goalkeeper Rui Patricio and his two understudies, Anthony Lopes and Eduardo.
The French goalkeepers were followed a few minutes later by the rest of the team, who jogged onto the pitch to a rousing chorus of «Allez Les Bleus» from flag waving French fans at both ends of the stadium. The players ran to the fans massed behind Lloris’s goal and applauded them.
Last to arrive for their warmup were the Portugal players, led out by captain Cristiano Ronaldo, who also led his players in applauding the Portugal supporters.
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8:05 p.m.
Clouds of moths in the Stade de France are bugging players and officials ahead of the final.
In 28-degree (82 Fahrenheit) heat in the stadium, the moths are at field level and dozens of birds are circling about the roof.
Referee Mark Clattenburg of England was seen swiping at the moths as he tested the goal-line technology equipment at each end of the pitch before the France vs. Portugal game.
France coach Didier Deschamps stayed on the field only briefly with members of his staff 90 minutes before the kickoff
Members of UEFA’s executive committee, including former Croatia forward Davor Suker, were also flapping their hands at the insects as they posed for a team photograph near the entrance to the players’ tunnel.
Stadium staff with vacuum cleaners were gathering up moths in each of the technical areas in front of the dugouts.
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7:55 p.m.
Key central defender Pepe and holding midfielder William Carvalho return to the Portugal side to face France.
Pepe sat out the semifinal against Wales with a thigh muscle injury, while Carvalho missed it through suspension. Pepe replaces Bruno Alves, while Carvalho comes in for Danilo in a 4-1-3-2 and will sit in front of the back four.
Cristiano Ronaldo spearheads the attack.
France coach Didier Deschamps has kept the same side that beat Germany 2-0 in the semifinals.
Moussa Sissoko lines up on the right of midfield in a 4-2-3-1 formation, with the tournament’s six-goal top scorer Antoine Griezmann playing just behind center forward Olivier Giroud.
Attacking midfielder Dimitri Payet keeps his place wide left, despite a poor game against Germany, while Paul Pogba and Blaise Matuidi will anchor the central midfield.
Center half Samuel Umtiti makes just his third international appearance and lines up alongside Laurent Koscielny.
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7:45 p.m.
Here are the lineups for the final between Portugal and France at Stade de France:
Portugal: Rui Patricio, Cedric Soares, Jose Fonte, Pepe, Raphael Guerreiro, William Carvalho, Joao Mario, Renato Sanches, Adrien Silva, Nani, Cristiano Ronaldo.
France: Hugo Lloris, Bacary Sagna, Samuel Umtiti, Laurent Koscielny, Patrice Evra, Paul Pogba, Blaise Matuidi, Moussa Sissoko, Antoine Griezmann, Dimitri Payet, Olivier Giroud.
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6:55 p.m.
Mark Clattenburg, who will referee the final, has paid tribute to the behavior of players at the tournament, saying their desire «to get on with the game» has made matches more entertaining and easier to referee.
«There have been a lot of positive comments across the footballing world about the standard of refereeing at the final tournament,» Clattenburg said in an interview with UEFA’s website. «There’s always room for improvement, but the behavior of the players has been fantastic — on the whole, the players have just got on with the match.»
Clattenburg said advance contact with teams had paid dividends. «There’s been no dissent, no mobbing of the referee. It’s been a wonderful sight to see.»
He said UEFA’s Referees Committee had sent match officials to see each team before the tournament, listening to them and explaining what would happen during games.
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5:55 p.m.
France or Portugal will top the European Championship prize money table with at least 25 million euros ($27.6 million) from UEFA.
UEFA created a prize fund of 301 million euros ($333 million) for football federations from the 24 competing countries.
All get a basic 8 million euros ($8.8 million), plus results bonuses from group-stage games — 1 million euros ($1.1 million) for a win and 500,000 euros ($550,000) for a draw — then payments on a rising scale for each knockout round.
France has already earned 18.5 million euros ($20.4 million) and can add 8 million euros ($8.8 million) more for winning the final on Sunday. The runner-up gets 5 million euros ($5.5 million) more.
Portugal currently has 17.5 million euros ($19.3 million).
Players should get bonuses totaling several millions from the prize money.
Germany — which got $35 million from FIFA for winning the 2014 World Cup — added 18.5 million euros ($20.5 million) from UEFA for reaching the semifinals.
Euro 2016 surprise teams Wales and Iceland go home with, respectively, 18 million euros ($19.9 million) and 14 million euros ($15.5 million).
Ukraine, the only team to lose all three group games, received the least amount of 8 million euros ($8.8 million).
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