Playing field in Basle stadium is replaced

"We are very confident that the exchange of the lawn will be a success and the game on Thursday take place under normal conditions," Swiss organising committee spokeswoman Pascale Voegeli told a news conference on Monday.

Voegeli spoke of "scenarios" if worse comes to worst and the operation is not successful, but did not elaborate what would happen in this case to the game between Portugal and Germany, Austria or Poland.

The change of the playing field was made necessary after torrential rain during last week's match between Switzerland and Turkey led to a water-logged pitch.

Voegeli said that the drainage system could simply not take up so much water. She spoke of 180 litres of rain per square-metre and hour on the night while the system can only cope with 100 litres.

Further training sessions and another match on Sunday then made the ruling body UEFA late Sunday decide that a pitch change was necessary.

Basle is to host three more matches, quarter-finals on Thursday and Saturday, and a semi-final on June 25.

"Euro 2008 SA has decided - after consultation with pitch experts, the host football associations and UEFA - to replace the playing surface at the St. Jakob Park stadium following the last group phase match between Switzerland and Portugal," UEFA said in a statement.

Voegeli said that the old lawn was removed from shortly after Sunday's game onwards until later Monday, and that the new pitch would be rolled out by Tuesday afternoon.

The new lawn comes from the Netherlands and was brought to Switzerland in 26 refrigerated trucks. The operation costs of 100,000 euros (154,000 dollars) are covered by UEFA, Voegeli said.

Voegeli said that it should be no problem to stage a match two days after the surface was laid, saying that when the Euro pitch was laid in late April a contest also took place 48 hours later.

She also dismissed suggestions that the playing field had suffered ahead of the Swiss-Turkey match.

"The pitch was perfect before, it is all because of (the rain on) June 11," she said.