Our fatal flaws

THE joint Scottish/Irish bid was doomed from the start, undermined by two fatal flaws in the package they had on offer.

One was the stadium issue in Ireland where members of the UEFA inspection team could not be shown one available stadium up to UEFA standards for hosting the championships when they visited Dublin. The second, and possibly more critical, issue was the fact that Scotland FA officials were promoting three stadiums in Glasgow as a powerful element of their bid.

Officials on both the Irish and Scottish sides of the joint bid were not happy to be confronted with queries on both of these issues. Their reluctance to be drawn into a public discussion on them probably told its own tale.

The Celtic bid, which had been rated as second favourite, finally trailed in fourth out of seven as Austria and Switzerland won the day.

The Scots and Irish claimed they were "crucified" by the decision of UEFA's bid inspection team the national teams committee not to recommend their bid among the four they put forward to the 14-man executive board who took the final vote.

Mr. Brendan Menton, former general secretary of the FAI, insisted that the commitment from the Government to provide two stadiums of the required standard for the use of the championship committee for the 2008 finals meant that UEFA criteria were met in full. He believed the fact that no stadium of the requisite size currently existed was not an issue the fact that Portugal were still in the process of renovating stadiums and building new stadiums in advance of the championship finals there in 2004 meant that UEFA had reacted positively in similar circumstances when Portugal out-bid Spain four years ago.

He argued that if Portugal succeeded in securing the finals in the face of such a powerful challenge as that mounted by the hugely powerful Spanish FA on the strength of a commitment to have stadiums in place then a similar commitment from Ireland should be accepted this time round.

Perhaps, but it is difficult to ignore the possibility that those delegates who visited Dublin were not hugely impressed when shown a green-field site in Abbotstown and told 'this is where the new national stadium will be'. And they cannot have been overwhelmed at being shown Croke Park and told 'this is Ireland's only stadium of international class. It is not available to us now, but the rules might change'.

Mr. Gerhard Aigner, chief executive of UEFA conceded that the negative element of the Dublin case might have been a consideration.

"The Dublin stadium situation was not mentioned in discussions" he said with reference to what was said and acted upon at the meeting of the Executive Committee, "but it could have been present in individuals' thoughts when they gave their opinions. All I can tell you is that it was not mentioned."

The Glasgow scenario was even more obscure, but, unlike the Dublin issue, there is no doubt that it impinged upon the minds of the UEFA delegates and must have influenced the voting trends.

The stadiums in question are three enormous structures Hampden Park with a capacity of 52,045; Celtic Park 60,501 and Ibrox 50,444. Any one of the three was capable of housing the two big games; the opening match and the final.

UEFA delegates were not impressed at the idea of concentrating so much of the activity associated with a championship final tournament in the one city. Privately, a Scottish official or two was prepared to concede the importance of this issue.

It is beyond dispute that the Scotland/Ireland joint bid would have carried much more weight had the Irish Government been able to pledge the use of Croke Park for the finals. It could have been the venue for the opening match.

The availability of at least 70,000 seats at Croke Park would have weighed heavily with UEFA if only from a purely economical viewpoint. The chief revenue streams come from ticket sales, TV rights and sponsorship revenues. The availability of Croke Park would have brought the potential aggregate spectator capacity way above all other bids.

In this regard the reaction of UEFA treasurer Mathieu Sprengers of Holland was interesting when I expressed the Scottish/Irish puzzlement at how poorly they have fared in the voting process.

"Scotland and Ireland was a very serious bid in my view" he said, "they were eliminated at too early a stage for me. I have no idea why but I was surprised.

"I am the treasurer of UEFA and I am obliged to look at the financial side of the bids and I must say the bid of Scotland and Ireland was not the 'baddest' (sic) from a financial point of view.

"I don't mind that Switzerland and Austria was the winner but I would have been happy if Scotland and Ireland was the winner, you can believe me."

However, the evidence suggested that the absence of an available stadium in Ireland and the logistical problems of using three venues in Glasgow meant that the Scotland/Ireland bid was like a hobbled horse, handicapped even before the race.

Bid advisor David Will, Scotland's FIFA vice-president and a non-voting observer on UEFA's executive committee, said they were shocked by the inspection team's decision to effectively rank their bid on a level with virtual no-hopers Russia and Bosnia/Croatia.

"We were astounded. The national teams committee recommended four bids and we were not included and we never recovered from that. It crucified us."

In the end, Scotland and Ireland were eliminated and then Turkey/Greece before the vote came down to a straight fight between Austria/Switzerland and Hungary, with the joint bid winning the vote 9-3 to spark scenes of joy in Geneva.

Will added: "The executive committee takes the decision, not the national teams committee, but it would be very difficult for them to ignore those recommendations completely.

"I cannot understand it I believe our technical rating was more or less even with Austria/Switzerland's."

Bid leader David Taylor, also chief executive of the Scottish FA, said they would seek to learn lessons but insisted there would not be an inquest.

"In terms of the technical assessment we had a 94% rating compared to Austria and Switzerland's 95%. The others were not even in the 90s.

*additional reporting by Martyn Ziegler