Euro 2008 - Portugal attract crowd of 12,000 for training  

VIENNA, June 3 (Reuters) - A crowd 12,000 people have paid to watch Portugal's Euro 2008 squad set up an open practice, Neuchatel, a team spokesman said.

Tickets are in favour of 15 Swiss francs ($ 14.42) to watch the Group A favourites at Neuchatel La Maladiere stadium on Tuesday (1630 GMT) has been sold out and is currently being negotiated, the black market to four times that price, the Portuguese on-line media said.

"There have been 12000 people to watch practice, that has already been confirmed," a team spokesman Antonio Florencio, said over the telephone Neuchatel.

Portugal came to a rousing welcome an estimated 10000 crowd Portuguese abroad for their tournament hotel is located lakeside city on Sunday night, media reported.

"Neuchatel is a little piece of Portugal, Central Europe," said maisfutebol.iol.pt

Carlos Godinho, the squad's technical director said, the Portuguese were in the charging of two training sessions, to help meet the high cost of their participation in the tournament. There is another open meeting held on Sunday.

"We are the only national team that has paid for training sessions, but we are also the only one who has been training in front of 12000 people," he told journalists.

However, the fans were less satisfied with the high security operation around the team, whose hotel has been declared out of bounds to anyone not attached to the squad, reports said.

There was the safety of the vessel is a lake to make sure nobody got within 300 metres of the hotel grounds and the big black discs hotel environment is to prevent contact with players.

Portugal, who are trained twice behind closed doors on Monday, meet in Turkey, Geneva on Saturday to open it up to a group match. They also face co-hosts Switzerland and the Czech.