In Portugal, not only did they build lots of new stadiums but they also made vast investments into the infrastructure, not least to be able to quickly and safely get the visitors from their hotels to the stadiums and back again.
Yes I went to Euro 2004 (not 2002) both to the Lisbon Estadio de la Luz (England v France) and also to Coimbra (England v Switzerland).
The sum total of Portuguese infrastructure investment resulted in over 2 hours to get in to the stadium in Lisbon and nearly 2 hours to get out due to the fact there were actually only about 4 exits from the parapet around the stadium. I could post pics of the chaos if I wanted to and I was on official FA tickets!
In Coimbra it was a monumental cock up, as there were about 20,000 England fans travelling north from Lisbon (some from Faro even, as helpful friendly UK Tour Operators had put them into Albufeira for Coimbra...a bit like Birmingham for Inverness)!
When the traffic got snarled up on the main highway north to Coimbra, what did Portuguese Police do....shut the motorway exit for Coimbra and told everyone to carry on North and sort it out amongst themselves! We even saw 2 Policemen up a ladder at the motorway exits taking down the "estadio orange signs",others put barriers across the exits. This resulted in about 15,000 driving from 15km north of Coimbra and then south back into Coimbra and thru the city centre, which was also totally snarled up. Car dumping and walking became the order of the day, and we set off from Peniche 5 hours before kick off for a journey of 100km max!
This is my second Euros and I have done three world Cups including a final in Madrid (1982) and as yet, not found any of them anything like the "corporate statements" about infrastructure except 1966 and Euro 96! The Madrid final took a 9 hour coach journey from Barcelona as they had screwed up capacity and a return via madrid Airport, which was more like a field hospital out of "Mash". Not to mention it was the hottest day of the year 39 degrees.
Can you imagine what it will be like in Brazil to follow your team spread from Salvador to Belem and Brasilia? Don't believe what you read!