“As co-hosts, we feel the last few pieces are now in place,” he said, speaking exclusively to Football Business magazine.

“We are now confirming final details and will be taking over the stadiums on 12th May, in preparation for the official tournament commencement on 7th June in Basel. People are getting more and more excited and welcoming the event.

It feels a bit like New Years Eve at five minutes to midnight, if I am being honest! Our cities are decorated by banners and the festival atmosphere is really coming together with people waiting to welcome guests from all over the world. The kettle is already boiling, maybe at 70 degrees at the moment.

Well, there is a huge difference between this and the previous co-hosted tournament in Holland and Belgium some eight years ago because with the help of UEFA we are centralising the event. There are some differences too in that Switzerland is still the small island in Europe so we have several other things to consider in terms of its own regulations and its relationship with the European Union. But the two countries already have a very good friendship and relation, and the cooperation is smooth and neighbourly.

And of course the two nations have more to identify each other than just the Alps! There is still a big difference in the cultural and political systems, so this makes the tournament very rich, so that visitors can really enjoy the experience.

There is centralised decision-making by UEFA marketing, so we have a huge resource there with, as you would expect, a number of specialist staff responsible for various elements of the marketing set-up.

UEFA’s European Championships is next to the Champions League and the Olympics as the biggest tournament in the world but we want to conduct what we do with personality, and I feel we are succeeding in this.

Effectively we are doubling the scope of interest. Naturally, if you take the two respective populations for Austria and Switzerland you are talking about a population of about 50million people. Compared to some other nations that may appear quite small, but in this case we have an advantage and the possibility to sell the product to national supporters twice. An example would be the various merchandising rights, to which we have attached a local saleability. I don’t feel we could have sold those projects at a higher price if they were only available once.

We know this will be the most successful European Championships ever. We are expecting to generate an income of 1.25billion Euros, which offers an approximate 45% uplift on figures achieved from the tournament in Portugal in 2004. This is a fantastic result that has been made largely out of media and commercial rights, though in addition, hospitality and ticketing have also been strong revenue-generating factors.

The authorities here in Switzerland have spent 100million Euros on the stadia which is an impressively low outlay given that this is such a prominent world sporting event, with the bulk of that going towards aspects of security.

Obviously any infrastructural spend will be returned many times over in the benefit that the country will gain from the marketing and promotional exercises that run alongside the football itself, both here and now, and in years to come.

Maybe we could have had more investment in certain areas, but politically it is always difficult to obtain large sums of money from the government, so in that respect our financial pledge is moderate. That said, we feel we have everything we need, and the real value is in the efficiency of the campaign not necessarily the magnitude of it. This is a great example of spending wisely rather than widely.

Counterfeiting for any governing body in the sports market remains a great problem. Obviously, we have to protect our brand and our tournament, but primarily we are looking out for our sponsors.

On-street merchandise is taken care of by national law enforcement authorities, so what really falls under our remit is ticketing. New technology means we can isolate potential touts immediately and take steps to halt their supply of tickets. In essence, if we gain any notion of criminal intent then we can intercept the danger immediately.

We will obviously work closely with the authorities through all stages, but we have the ability to subjectively assess when a fan might be selling his ticket to his friend or brother, as obviously this is a normal thing and not a problem.

The end reality remains, however, that where there is enormous demand there will always be black markets and this is part of the fabric of football and an unfortunate by-product of the sport’s success.