Next year’s European Football Championships are scheduled for June 7-29. Switzerland and Austria are sharing hosting duties, with matches scheduled in Vienna, Klagenfurt, Salzburg, Innsbruck, Zurich, Basel, Bern, and Geneva. Overseen by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), the Championship will have Austria and Switzerland mobbed with soccer-mad Europeans from every corner of the continent.

A few weeks later, from July 7 through 13, the second VIVA World Cup, a competition run with far less fanfare, will take place in the Swedish city of Gällivare. Hosted by the Sápmi Football Association, the football club of the indigenous Arctic Sámi people, the VIVA World Cup allows teams representing nations and subnational groupings without membership in the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) to compete against other subnational groupings. An umbrella organization called the Nouvelle Fédération-Board (or NF-Board) offers a form of legitimization.

Participating teams represent a hodgepodge of entities: microstates, breakaway regions, places with a strong regional identity, and transnational peoples like the Sápmi and the Roma. Among European members of the NF-Board are Chechnya, Wallonia, Occitania, and Monaco.

The VIVA World Cup site doesn’t yet amount to much, so we’re breaking with convention by linking to the Wikipedia NF-Board page, which lists NF-Board members.

Klagenfurt in June and Gällivare in July? Why not?

Vienna’s fascination with sports and healthy living has always been striking. There’s the city’s popular spring marathon, the women’s marathon, the children’s marathon, and a host of additional runs.

Registration for the four-kilometer Erste Bank Vienna Night Run 2007 opened this month. The run will kick off at dusk on October 10 and will raise money for the benefit of blind and disabled people of the poor countries through a non-governmental Austrian organization, Licht für die Welt (Light for the World). Licht für die Welt’s aim is to totally reduce blindness among the poor people who need medicinal care through 2020. The start and finish lines will be around the former imperial stables in the Seventh District.

The registration fee is €20. Your cash will get you a trendy blue Puma running shirt along with the satisfaction of having done a good deed.

Photo by xavier_s

The French Open tennis tournament, officially known as Roland Garros, kicked off Sunday in Paris. Hardly a cheapo event, but tennis fan Cheapos can get the “Evening Visitor” passes at 10 euros for play after 5 p.m. on certain courts. Availability is based on the number of seats vacated by people who have already left the stadium for good. On a clear day, you can often expect play up until 9 p.m. The offer is good for the first week of the tournament through Sunday June 3 inclusive. The “Evening Visitor” passes will be available at the ticket windows at the Porte des Mousquetaires for those outside the stadium. To get to Roland Garros, take the metro line 10 and get off at Porte D’Auteuil.

Photo by triptothegluefactory

Golf isn’t generally up our alley, but we’re nothing if not suggestable.

Dublin Tourism is now offering a host of great golfing offers from clubs around Ireland. Participating clubs include Malahide Golf Club and St. Anne’s Golf Club in County Dublin.

Until June 30, Malahide Golf Club is offering greens fees of just €30 for play on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays before 9:30 a.m., and only €40 for play after 9:30 a.m.

At St. Anne’s Golf Club the fees will stand at €40 until May 31 for play before 8:30 a.m. on any weekday.

Photo by YanivL

Unless you are a die-hard Euroleague basketball fan, you probably won’t want to shell out the €497 to €1247 (ouch!) for tickets to the playoffs in Athens this weekend, but you can still enjoy all the hoopla surrounding the event.

The biggest indoor sporting event to take place in Athens since the 2004 Summer Olympic Games, the Euroleague Final Four has got the whole city abuzz with excitement, especially as Athens’ own Panathinaikos is competing for the top spot.

In Syntagma Square, the public is invited to play hoops with Nerf-style nets and balls. Bars all around the city are planning to broadcast the games. If you crave more frenzied action, just go to OAKA and listen to the games with other fans outside the arena!

The semi-finals will tip off tonight at 5:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. CET. The finals will be played at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday.

Photo by Aknay Tibor

For the third year running, the town of Szilvásvárad (translation: plum castle!) is hosting its outdoor festival on May 26. The festival features all manner of extreme sports: rodeo riding, bungee jumping, speed, hot-air ballooning, hang-gliding, and motor sports among others. Great news for Cheapos: the outdoor festival is free of charge.

Best of all, the setting of the festival is idyllic. Szilvásvárad is located in one of the most beautiful parts of Hungary, at the foot of the Bükk Hills. The area is surrounded by forests and blessed with trout pools, an old wooden train that passes through forests, and even a prehistoric cave.

To get to Szilvásvárad from Budapest, take the train from Keleti Station. The journey takes just over three hours and costs HUF3570 (€14.40; $19.60.)

Photograph by World of Jeff!

The important cities in Austria and Switzerland are where the action is when it comes to the UEFA European Championship 2008. According to the UEFA Web site, groundwork for a European national-team competition began in 1956, achieving fruition in 1958 as the European Nations’ Cup, and is now known as the UEFA European Championship.Fans have until March 31 to book tickets to see their football idols live. There will be six matches in Vienna, including the finals on June 29 at the Ernst Happel Stadium. Beyond Austria’s capital, Klagenfurt, Salzburg, and Innsbruck will see some action as well. Invididuals can order a maximum of four tickets, which are on first-come-first-served basis. So hurry.

Austria will also import security manpower from neighboring Germany to ensure smooth sailing. After a violent incident that took place in Italy earlier this month—costing one life and rendering several spectators severely injured—officials are keen to keep hooliganism in check.

To quench public thirst for the upcoming event, several street football matches will transpire in Vienna, beginning next month. Plus, there will be gratis open-air kinos in several locations—this circuit includes a free kino in front of Vienna’s Rathaus on August 12—featuring films, like “Dan Wunder von Bern,” with football themes.

The Rathaus will also be the meeting point for public viewing of EM 2008. Here fans will be able to watch and cheer on their favorite football team on a huge screen.

Oh, those fun-loving Swiss. We adore them for their ingenuity, their courage (even in the face of death-defying extreme sports), and most importantly, their determination that the party must go on even in the face of, well, disaster.

Sadly, we must report that the Slide Disaster Contest scheduled to take place on Eggli mountain in Gstaad this weekend has met its own disaster. Inclement weather means that there will be no spectacular and innovative descents made by daring inventors of original (and probably dangerous) sliding apparatuses. And worse yet, no winner, err…Master of Disaster.

Those heading to Eggli, well-designed “sliding objects” in tow, don’t fear: the after-disaster party on Saturday March 3rd will still happen.

The Swiss, you see, do not meet defeat lying down. Their contest may have met with disaster, but they will party on. And you, oh deflated Masters of Disaster, should too. So take your unused sliding object, make yourself an honorary Master of Disaster crown, and get thee to Gstaad on Saturday evening for the party. We guarantee it will still be filled with the daring and the crazy—and, to be sure, a disaster or two.

photograph courtesy of Directions_to_Orthodoxy

Vatican commandos began their pilgrimage to the soccer fields surrounding St. Peter’s Basilica Saturday for the first match of the Clericus Cup. The tournament is host to 16 different teams from Catholic institutes around Rome. The first match, between Mater Ecclesiae and Gregorian University, attracted an international crowd, signage depicting the Virgin Mary, and inspirational chants.

The Cup shall runneth over through June, giving fans of all denominations plenty of time to catch a match before (and after!) Sunday mass.

Amen, right?